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The Treatment Relationship is the Conceptual Center of the theories that inform clinical psychoanalysis. Consequently, it is useful to differentiate its many components. Regrettably, the word “transference” tends to obscure rather than illuminate what transpires within that remarkable exchange, so I prefer the more descriptive term “treatment relationship” or “therapeutic interaction.” There are aspects of the relationship that arise from past conflicts and earlier mental organizations; there are aspects of the relationship that reflect the realistic features of the participants as they encounter one another; there are aspects of the relationship that express externalized and projective features of each of the players. Distinguishing these old, real, and externalized features is always a formidable task, a task that is further burdened when the distinctions are ignored and all are huddled together under the global Babel-term, transference.
When dealing with children and adolescents another feature surfaces. The path to maturity is guided by an unfolding biological program. The potential of that program is actualized by structured stimuli provided by at least a “good enough” environment. Separation-individuation requires persons to titrate the anxiety of loss and