Concept
Drive/structure and relational/structure models
The two families into which Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell sorted psychoanalytic theories in Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983), according to what each takes as the basic stuff of the mind. In the drive/structure model, which begins with Freud, relations with others are derived from the drives: other people matter as targets or means of drive satisfaction, and mental structure grows out of managing drive pressure. In the relational/structure model, which begins with Sullivan's interpersonal theory and Fairbairn's object relations, relations with others come first and mental structure is built out of them. The authors held that the two rest on incompatible views of human nature, and read later theories either as accommodating relational findings inside drive theory (Hartmann, Mahler, Jacobson, Kernberg) or as mixing the two models (Kohut, Sandler).
Development
1983
introduced by Stephen A. Mitchell
With Greenberg, Mitchell drew the line between theories in which relations with others serve the drives and theories in which relations come first. That division became the founding frame of the relational school.
In Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983)
1983
introduced by Jay Greenberg
Greenberg, Mitchell's co-author on the 1983 book, shares credit for the two-model classification. Unlike Mitchell, he later argued that psychoanalysis cannot do without a drive concept.
In Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983)
Relations
- 1983 introduced by Stephen A. Mitchell
With Greenberg, Mitchell drew the line between theories in which relations with others serve the drives and theories in which relations come first. That division became the founding frame of the relational school.
- 1983 introduced by Jay Greenberg
Greenberg, Mitchell's co-author on the 1983 book, shares credit for the two-model classification. Unlike Mitchell, he later argued that psychoanalysis cannot do without a drive concept.
- gave rise to Relational psychoanalysis
The school takes its name and starting point from the 1983 split between drive/structure and relational/structure models. It grew from the relational side of that divide.
Works
- 1983
Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory
Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell's book, published by Harvard University Press in 1983, compares the major psychoanalytic theories according to one question: where each places a person's relations with others. The authors distinguish two basic models. In the drive/structure model, which descends from Freud, relations with others are generated and shaped by the need to gratify drives. In the relational/structure model, relations are primary and cannot be reduced to anything more basic. The book reads Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal psychoanalysis and the British object relations theories of Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Guntrip as radical alternatives to drive theory. It reads the ego psychology of Hartmann, Mahler, Jacobson and Kernberg as a strategy of accommodation, which widens drive theory to take object relations in. Kohut and Sandler are treated as mixed-model strategies that combine elements of both. A final chapter follows the divergence between the two models into debates on diagnosis and clinical technique.
See also
People
References
- Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory1983Evidence for a relation