ABSTRACT
The patient's ability to ally is not a static variable. These unique conditions under which each person trusts are templates of expectations formed by repeated interactions with people. Behavioral therapists call these interpersonal templates conditioning paradigms; cognitive therapists, belief systems or schema; psychodynamic therapists, object relationship paradigms or transferences; biological therapists, associational networks or contextual memories triggering neurochemical events. People without a history of mature alliances may instead have the seeds of an alliance capacity within them. It is useful to be aware of the possibility of a pseudo alliance. Pseudo alliances, seeds of an alliance, and "conditions under which" have several threads in common. In the face of the preliminary discouragement that such a history might stir, it helps to remember that a capacity for alliance, like all psychological capacities, exists on a continuum. People without a history of mature alliances may instead have the seeds of an alliance capacity within them.
