Psychoanalysis is undergoing rapid and remarkable changes in its basic metapsychology, theoretical reflections, and concrete, clinical interventions. Through self-psychology, Heinz Kohut's alternative views on the clinical relationship have contributed to this restructuring of psychoanalysis. Traditionally, mainstream psychoanalysis has viewed the analyst as personally unimplicated in the work with the disordered other person; the analysand as past pre-Oedipal modes of experiential structuration; and the disorder as a drive-defense approach modeled after the neurosis. According to Kohut, the modes of relatedness in the psychoanalytic experience are the mirror and idealizing transferences. The therapeutic relationship is perceptually faithful, unitary and dialogal. In self-psychology, disorder is viewed as the difference between knowledge (awareness available to self) and innocence. The person views himself in self-object terms and other people in part-object terms. The clinical relationship reveals the experience of varying degrees of experiential structuration at different times. Thus, the transference relationship expresses a particular development level. The clinician, therefore, must be prepared to adopt different listening perspectives, based on the level of structuration being expressed. (BL)