The accumulation of psychoanalytic knowledge concerning the early development of personality today permits its increasing application to the treatment of patients representing widely varying levels of personality structuralization. However, a re-mobilization of the patient's arrested developmental potientials requires that the analytic interaction be phase-specifically attuned and the techniques used be accordingly adjusted. In this paper, an attempt is made to discuss the phase-specific psychoanalytic encounter of patients representing different levels of pathology with corresponding arrests and disturbances in the structuralization of their personalities. It is suggested that therapeutic techniques which are based on established psychoanalytic knowledge of personality development and which have proved phase-specifically growth-promoting should be included in the technique of psychoanalytic treatment understood in a broad sense.