Why does the Aitken extrapolation often help to attain convergence in self-consistent field calculations?

The Aitken (three-point) extrapolation is one of the most popular convergence accelerators in the SCF calculations. The conditions that guarantee the Aitken extrapolation to bring about an unconditional convergence in the SCF process are examined. Classification of the SCF divergences is presented and it is shown that the extrapolation can be expected to work properly only in the case of oscillatory divergence.