ABSTRACT
What enables two people to form a collaborative relationship—boss and subordinate, physician and patient, therapist and client? Does this compatibility, or “psychotherapeutic resonance” as some (cf. Larson, 1987) have called it, derive from the ability to identify, within ourselves, a similarity with the experiences of the other? Or is it the intrigue of our differences; the press to see the world from a different vantage point? Is it as simple as being understood, or is it that we perceive that the other person struggles to understand us? The chemistry of personal compatibility is poorly understood. Yet, it is the essence of much of what we do.
