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First I would like to thank Dr. Milrod for his in-depth discussion of this report. Obviously, it would require another paper to adequately respond to his comments, so I will simply briefly highlight some of my thoughts.
1. Dr. Milrod sees this study as deficient because of its bias: it found what it proposed to be investigating. Certainly one's theoretical conceptualization affects how one evaluates and organizes data. In a presentation such as this, the aim of clinical data is to provide illustrations, not proof. There is no doubt that Dr. Milrod approaches the data with his own theoretical point of view. For example, on the one hand he criticizes the group's conclusions, about the patient who did not want to have sex with her boyfriend, slightly misquoting the report: “morality and defense (superego and ego) work as one and it is unnecessary to separate the two.” Yet he goes on to state that ego and superego “acted as two agencies in harmony and not as one.” In fact, the report states that “it is unnecessary to separate morality from defense in this case because the two function dynamically as one.” This seems identical to Dr. Milrod's statement. Furthermore, Dr. Mil-rod notes his surprise that the patient's associations to her conscious guilt led her to discuss how she expected disapproval from outer authority. Doesn't Dr. Milrod's surprise come from his theoretical bent? He says, “We associate guilt with superego pressure and not pressure from external authorities. The latter would constitute social anxiety.” Dr. Milrod repeatedly refers to “our” theory.
2. Dr. Milrod misrepresents the report when he states that the group felt that the intense desires and the intense unpleasures during the oedipal period are the only factors important in the development