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Considering a variety of points of view toward the question of the relationship between psychoanalysis and historical hypothesizing, Pois notes that there have been numerous and sustained challenges to both psychoanalysis and psychohistory over recent years. He agrees with Thomas Kohut that theoretical knowledge of the guiding tenets of psychoanalysis tends to subsist at the very center of most psychohistorical enterprises. For the psychoanalytic clinician, however, theory is only a tool to help the investigator comprehend the particular on its own terms, whereas the crucial task of psychohistory is to determine the relationship between the individual and general forces so as to expand the realm of historical consciousness. Even if psychohistory has to move beyond the boundaries of "traditional" psychoanalysis, it is plain to Pois that psychoanalysis and psychohistory "go together." Pois concludes that the clinically trained psychohistorian is best able to deal with the most vexing historical problem: "the relationship of historical individuals or collections of them to the vanished solidarities which influence them and upon which they in turn have exerted influences."