Relational-conflict model

Stephen Mitchell's account of psychic conflict and psychopathology, set out in Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis (1988) and taken further in Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis (1993). It keeps conflict at the centre of psychoanalysis but moves it from a clash between drives and defences to a clash between relational ties: attachments, loyalties and identifications with significant others, formed early and pulling in different directions. People keep re-creating these familiar patterns of connection even when they bring pain, because they are the known ways of being with others. Mitchell set the model against both classical drive-conflict theory and developmental-arrest theories, which explain pathology as early needs that went unmet. In treatment the analyst becomes caught up in the patient's patterns and works with the patient, from inside the relationship, to understand them and build new ones.