“Therapeutic alliance”, what does it actually mean?

“Therapeutic alliance”, what does it actually mean?
Monday June 18, 2007

Dear Alice Miller.
Thank you for everything I have been learning from your books during the last 12 years.
I was in my mid-twenties when I first got to know The Drama of the giftet Child.
When i was 28 I started with psychoanalysis since I suspected my many depressions and problems in managing my adult life to be related to my mothers emotional insecurity and severe trouble with managing HER life when I was a child. She reversed the roles and made me be her mother in stead of the other way around, as it should be…
Anyway, I did manage to find a psychoanalyst who helped me to understand my relationship with my mother, and why I had such problems in getting on with my life. I learnt that she had used me and she now stood in my way to get to know myself, and therefore life always seemed distant to me, as I was not able to really participate in my own life.
This feeling was horrible. And it still is. My therapist keeps telling me that she is blocking the therapeutic effect and hence I don’t get the feeling of trust and vitality.
I trust my therapist to some degree, but I haven’t reached the point to where I could really trust him, and I can’t help wondering if he might be blocking my recovery himself. I do belive, as you say, that once you feel deeply understood the body will let you know this and it will relax immedeately.
My problem is that I do not know whether my lack of trust (which is the “fuel” in the healing-process) and failing to recover is caused by the opposition of the inner structure( which we call my mother) or if it is caused by my therapist failing in giving me the special understanding and support that I need. Is it possible that an inner structure can block the healing-process if one experience a severe conflict, that to let my mother down in order to help myself, or do you think that this reaction could be the result of some qualities missing in the therapeutic alliance?

All the best to you and to your good work.
I thank you very much for your opinion in this matter.
T.M

AM: Why don’t you trust your feeling of not being understood and being labeled instead?