ABSTRACT
Unique aspects of the therapeutic frame are harder to define. These aspects have to do with the therapist's basic attitude and demeanor. They involve a particular emotional and affective climate, or atmosphere, established in a treatment. Therapists vary in their capacity for warmth, empathy, friendliness, calmness, objectivity, limit setting and so on. The therapist needs to monitor consistently the boundaries that exist between patient and therapist. The therapeutic alliance begins to take hold in a treatment as the therapeutic process is initiated. Transferential reactions on the part of the patient, and counter-transferential reactions on the therapist's part, can operate at times in every treatment to interfere with or undermine the treatment's progression. Psychotherapy is a cooperative venture that requires mutuality in order for the partners entering it to work and learn together.
