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I am very pleased to be participating in this ecumenical effort to correlate different models of psychoanalysis with their clinical applications. As a first caveat, it should be understood that I do not intend my remarks as a direct commentary on Dr. Silverman's obviously accomplished presentation, since an adumbrated clinical report cannot fairly be held to be an accurate representation of the work, which is a far more organic, multidimensional process. Moreover, much that is effective in any therapy operates at the margins of awareness of the therapist and is not reportable. Some of therapy even takes place outside the office, in interaction with the inevitable ubiquitous surrogate therapists: mates, parents, and friends — critics and supporters, both, of the therapeutic work. Consequently, third-party observation of a psychoanalysis is always on a different level of abstraction from the therapy under examination. It does not address a particular patient as much as a class of interactions of which the patient is an example (Bateson, 1979; Levenson, 1982).
My second caveat is in regard to the myth of a monolithic Interpersonal Psychoanalysis. There is a wide spectrum of psychoanalytic attitudes subsumed under the “interpersonal” rubric, and, as Gill (1983) has pointed out they are not necessarily highly congruent in their clinical approaches. That is, of course, no less true with any