Clinician and psychoanalyst Warren S. Poland addresses some of the key questions in the field today. What is an analysis? What is the relationship of the individual patient to the specific analyst and to the work at hand? How can attention to the uniqueness of an individual patient be balanced with the inevitable pressures of the clinical partnership? And, put in the other direction, how can respect for the inevitable imperatives of the dyadic field be balanced with the primacy of the exploration of the patient's mind? How can the interactive context of clinical work be created without compromising the centrality of the search for meanings derivative from unconscious forces within the patient as a singular individual?. Containing clinical examples, this book should be of interest to anyone interested in psychotherapy.