A therapeutic alliance, or working alliance, is a partnership between a patient and his or her therapist that allows them to achieve goals through agreed-upon tasks. The concept of therapeutic alliance dates back to Sigmund Freud. Over the course of its evolution, the meaning of the therapeutic alliance has shifted both in form and implication. What started as an analytic construct has become, over the years, a transtheoretical formulation, an integrative variable, and a common factor.