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Margaret Black's paper makes a very interesting and important contribution to analytic technique. I would summarize it as saying that the therapist's theory significantly influences his stance which in turn influences the transference and may lead him to overlook important modes of adaptation which are efforts to deal with conflicts. I have had particularly vivid illustrations of this fault in my own practice. My earlier emphasis on the interpretation of transference (Gill, 1982) rather than on a different conception of transference (Gill, 1984a) led me on occasion to overlook transferential compliance with my emphasis on transference. In general what may be overlooked in adhering not only to particular theories but also to the external trappings of analysis is superego defense, that is, the patient complies to satisfy a superego demand made by the analyst.
In my opinion the paper fails to carry its implications far enough in two areas: namely it stops short in its application of a relativist position and in the principle of the analysis of the transference.
As to the first, despite Black's recognition that any stance taken by the analyst will be interpreted by the patient “depending on the reverberations within each patient's subjective world” (p. 8), she also suggests that “each theory-derived technical approach produces a corresponding experiential gestalt” (p. 11). While it may well be that certain stances are more likely to be experienced in certain ways, exceptions are always possible. The exquisitely individual nature of any psychoanalysis demands that no matter how plausible a generalization may be, it must be examined for its validity in the individual patient. As Fliegel suggests, in concert with Bion “… in clinical work theory should never be actively remembered and 'applied'; at the same time our preconscious should be well-stocked with a multiplicity of models” (p. 00). The insidious manner in which a generalization may prejudge a