Concept
Relational matrix
Stephen Mitchell's name, in Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis (1988), for the web of relations with others in which a person's mind takes shape and which it keeps re-creating. He meant it to replace the drive as the basic unit of psychoanalytic explanation, and to sit above the split between theories that look at actual relationships with others and theories that look at internal objects. The matrix has three dimensions that cannot be separated: the self, the other, and the patterns of interaction in the space between them. On this view what is unconscious is not repressed drive derivatives but relational configurations that were never integrated.
- Broader concept
- Relational psychoanalysis
- Introduced by
- Stephen A. Mitchell
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- Relational-conflict model
introduced by
- Stephen A. Mitchell 1988 In Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis Mitchell made the relational matrix (self, other and the space between) the central structure of the mind, in place of the drive. He used it to integrate interpersonal theory, British object relations and self psychology.
gave rise to
- Relational-conflict model Both ideas come from the same 1988 book. The conflict model applies the relational matrix to psychopathology: once mind is made of relations, conflict lies between competing relational ties.