"The vehicle of success": theoretical and empirical perspectives on the therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy

Abstract

The importance of therapeutic therapeutic relationship or alliance in psychotherapy has long been recognized, first in clinical practice and theory and latterly in a wealth of quantitative research. In referring to positive transference as the vehicle of success in psychoanalysis exactly as it is in other methods of treatment, Sigmund Freud clearly conceived it as not exclusive to psychoanalysis. The role of non-verbal empathy and attunement is seen as curative in self-psychological and independent approaches, while in Kleinian psychotherapy, relative importance of insight and the corrective object relationship as mutative factors is unresolved. The findings of meta-analyses, then, are clearly being driven by two factors in particular, affective bonds and collaboration. The working alliance, then, might draw on either transferential or realistic elements of relationship, which it would put to use of furthering work of analysis.