Concept
Relational psychoanalysis
A school of psychoanalysis that took shape in the United States from the 1980s, named after the contrast Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell drew in 1983 between drive-based and relational models of the mind. It holds that mental life is built out of relations with others, real and internal, rather than out of innate drives pressing for discharge, and it brings together American interpersonal psychoanalysis and British object relations theory, later drawing on attachment theory, infancy research and feminist thought. Clinically it sees the analyst not as a neutral observer interpreting from outside but as a participant whose own subjectivity helps shape what happens between analyst and patient, so that meaning is made jointly.
- Narrower concepts
- Introduced by
- Key works
- 4
introduced by
- Stephen A. Mitchell 1983 Mitchell and Jay Greenberg first used "relational" as the name of a family of theories in their 1983 book. Mitchell then made it the name of a school: his 1988 integration, the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues (1990), the Relational Perspectives book series and the relational track at NYU's postdoctoral programme.
- Jay Greenberg 1983 Greenberg is the co-author of the 1983 book that gave relational psychoanalysis its name. He later moved away from Mitchell's pure relational position and went back to a revised concept of drive.
derives from
- Interpersonal psychoanalysis The relational school grew out of the American interpersonal tradition of Sullivan, Fromm and Thompson, mostly among analysts trained at the White Institute. It took from that tradition its focus on actual interactions and the analyst's participation.
- Object relations theory The second root of the relational school is British object relations theory, above all Fairbairn and Winnicott. From it the school took its concern with internal objects and with relations as the stuff of mind.
- Drive/structure and relational/structure models 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.
developed by
- Lewis Aron Aron built out the clinical side of relational theory. His work centred on the mutual influence of analyst and patient within an asymmetry of roles, and on the analyst's unavoidable subjectivity. He also helped build the school's institutions as founding president of the international relational association (IARPP).
- Jessica Benjamin Benjamin was one of the first New York analysts of the relational school and brought feminist theory and the idea of recognition into it. Mitchell and Aron reprinted her outline of intersubjectivity among the founding papers of the tradition.