Finding and refinding the therapeutic alliance: on thinking and thirds

This article represents an attempt to clarify some of our thinking about the component aspects of the analytic relationship as they enter into and play their role in the analytic setting and process. The interaction between transference and alliance generates a dual mental perspective within which the patient experiences and thinks about the analysis and the analyst experiences and thinks about the patient. Concepts of an analytic third, by displacing aspects of the alliance component of this dual relational perspective into either a separate transitional mental space or subjective third, have arisen in the attempt to shed light on the multiplicity of interactional perspectives in analysis: these are discussed and evaluated. The argument concludes that resort to the concept of an analytic third effectively dilutes the direct interpersonal involvement and responsibility of both analyst and patient for transactions within the therapeutic alliance.