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ASIGNIFICANT PAPER IN ANY FIELD IS ONE THAT CAN BE LOCATED IN A current or currents of thought and that provokes a number of extensions or expansions in the ideas of others. Lewis Aron situates himself among those authors (Altman, 1995; Kaplan, 1995; Cushman, 1995; Greenberg, 1997; Muller, 1996; Spezzano, in press) who have begun to work out the implications of the embeddedness of the psychoanalytic dyad in the Third and wider field, the “psychoanalytic community and the broader culture” (Aron, this issue). His focus on the development of theory of technique picks up on the contributions of Freud (1927), Fenichel (1941), Eissler (1953), Hartmann (1960), Bergmann and Hartman (1976), Wallerstein (1990), Mitchell (1993), and Kantrowitz (1997), with consideration for what revisions in practice and supervision might emerge from including the influence of the Third. Aron's inclusion of the Third. points to pedagogical as well as political considerations that have hitherto not been central to the discourse of psychoanalysis. Let me begin with pedagogy.
If we accept a shift from “standard technique” to pluralism, as Aron has traced, should we sequentially teach the theory of supervisor X, then the theory of supervisor Y, and then supervisor Z's theory? Or, should we teach all three (or more) treatment models and related treatment techniques, in parallel? If so, should these different perspectives be developed in one comparative course or taught in different courses by instructors competent to represent a particular school of thought? Or, initially, should we not introduce any particular models or methods but rather immerse our candidates in a series of challenging questions and treatment situations during which competent instructors