A particle-hole formalism is defined which is consistent with the tensor notation (and the index pairing) of the generators of the unitary group and their many-particle generalization. The corresponding generalized Wick theorem is formulated. The classification of basis operators as ‘‘closed,’’ ‘‘open,’’ ‘‘closed from above,’’ and ‘‘closed from below’’ given previously is extended to the present context. Both the perturbative and nonperturbative construction of effective Fock space Hamiltonians is discussed in the particle-hole formalism, especially for the case that the ‘‘physical vacuum’’ satisfies a Hartree–Fock condition. For the calculations of the correlation energy of the physical vacuum Cizek’s CP-MET is compared formally with the unitary variant, the UNICEP (unitary coupled electron pair) approximation. A simple derivation of Goldstone’s ‘‘linked-cluster expansion’’ is also given.