The analyst and the working alliance

Heinrich Deserno undertakes a critical examination of Greenson's working alliance concept and its claim to represent the basis for any kind of rational collaboration between psychoanalyst and patient. The author sees in Greenson's concept a compromise designed to mitigate rigidities of technique but critically blind to its own dominant ego-psychological learnings. In Deserno's view the validity of the working alliance concept must be restricted to the work of the analyst: "The analyst forms a working alliance with on one other than himself."