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We consider the relevance for adult treatment of an empirical evaluation of a dyadic systems view of mother-infant face-to-face communication which examined self- and interactive contingency processes in relation to one another, using a time-series approach. Self-and interactive contingency define procedural expectancies. The mother-infant findings indicated that an individual's self-contingency is influenced by the way the individual coordinates with the partner, and vice versa. Thus, self-and interactive processes were coconstituted. Moreover, self-processes organized interactions to a far greater extent than interactive processes. These findings modify the mutual regulation model of interaction. Parallel findings are illustrated in an empirical study of three adult treatment cases by Holtz (2004). We tend to think of the interactive dimension itself, how each person responds to the other, as the fundamental relational dimension. But, the findings from both infant research and adult treatment research document that, within this relational process, there exists a powerful influence of each partner's own behavioral rhythms (self-contingency). Adding this self-contingency component changes our concept of what an interaction is. Interactive regulation is never the sole organizing process: it exists intertwined with self-organizing processes. And our own self-rhythms are partially influenced by our response to the partner, hence partially dyadic. Moreover, because self-contingency is so organizing, it exerts a powerful voice as it influences, and is influenced by, interactive contingency. Thus, within the reciprocal intertwining of self- and interactive processes, each affecting the other, self-processes may be even more organizing than interactive processes.