Person
Lewis Aron
American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, one of the leading theorists of relational psychoanalysis. In the 1980s he joined the circle of New York analysts around Stephen Mitchell and Jay Greenberg, and he was among the founders of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He directed New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and was the founding president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. In A Meeting of Minds (1996) he argued that the analyst's subjectivity is always present and that analysis rests on mutual influence within an asymmetry of roles, part of the move from a one-person to a two-person psychology.
- Born
- 1952
- Died
- 2019
- Known for
- Relational psychoanalysis
- Notable works
- Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition
collaborated with
- Stephen A. Mitchell 1999 Aron worked alongside Mitchell in the New York relational group. Both were among the founders of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and together they edited Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition (1999), the collection of the school's founding papers.
developed
- Relational psychoanalysis 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).