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The proliferation of theories purporting to explain the same data has proved an embarrassment of riches to psychoanalysis, which lacks a ready means for falsifying hypotheses. The situation was vividly illustrated in 1987 in Volume 7 of Psychoanalytic. Inquiry., entitled “How Theory Shapes Technique.” The entire issue was given over to an examination of the influence of the practitioner's theory on his or her technique in conducting a psychoanalysis. A brief case history was followed by a detailed account of four sessions. This material was then considered by ten analysts whose perspectives covered the entire ideological spectrum. Each presented his or her own understanding of the patient and sketched the tack he or she would have taken in contradistinction to that of the treating analyst. While all agreed that a stalemate existed in the case, the explanations otherwise had little in common.
It is the purpose of the present chapter to explore the implications of this study with regard to the history of the status of subjective experience in psychoanalytic theory and practice. A brief review of the case history and the process notes of the first session from Psychoanalytic Inquiry is given to provide the flavor of the material. Comments of the discussants on this material, their underlying assumptions, and the theories they explicitly applied are summarized. I attempt to identify the assumption made by each respondent with regard to the data of consciousness. Second, I show that the contradictory attitude toward the data of consciousness apparent in Freud's technical papers was not addressed theoretically because to him it was of no significance. The relationship