ABSTRACT
The therapeutic alliance is defined as part of the transference, although it is made to depend on a sufficiently mature ego, which does not exist in severely disturbed patients nor in children. Despite her well-known support for Sterba, Dr. Zetzel proposes an original line of thought, which distances her perhaps more than she thinks from the essay in Wiesbaden. Sterba maintains that psychoanalytic treatment becomes possible as a result of a dissociation of the ego, one of whose parts—the one directed towards reality—seals an alliance with the analyst in order to observe and understand the other, the instinctual and defensive one. The concept of regression in the transference can be considered an attempt to work through infantile traumatic experiences or to return to an earlier state of real or fantasied gratification. Dr. Zetzel's exposition at the Geneva Congress is the point of departure for a penetrating investigation of the role of the therapeutic alliance in the psychoanalytic process.
