In psychoanalytic therapy, any reference by the patient to earlier failures in interpersonal transactions. The patient typically expresses thoughts and feelings about earlier experiences (and especially about parent and child transactions) in a variety of ways, often indirect and veiled. It is the therapist’s task to grasp the meaning of the patient’s subjective experiences and to understand that the patient’s wishes during earlier periods reflected phase-appropriate self-developmental needs and were not simply pleasures to be denied.