Book
Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis
In Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis (BasicBooks, 1993), Stephen A. Mitchell argues that the field's devotion to its founder has hidden how far psychoanalysis has changed since Freud, and he describes a discipline moving beyond the limits of Freudian drive theory. Classical analysis places the patient's conflicts over sexual and aggressive impulses at its centre, inside the patient. Mitchell's version, illustrated with clinical cases, attends to the wishes and needs of both participants, analysand and analyst. It treats the tensions between their hopes and dreads, and the ways these are worked through, as the medium of therapeutic change. Drawing on object relations theories, self psychology and existential psychoanalysis, the book presents the analytic process as both personal and interpersonal. It joins two shifts in the field: a theoretical one, organised around the question of what the patient needs, and a metatheoretical one, organised around what the analyst knows, which bears on the analyst's authority in a constructivist view of the analytic situation. It also traces how the self became the central concept through which contemporary psychoanalysis addresses meaning, and considers the self as both multiple and continuous.
Main ideas
- Reverence for Freud has hidden how radically psychoanalysis has changed since he wrote; the field is moving beyond the confines of drive theory toward the concerns of contemporary life.
- Where classical analysis centres on the patient's inner conflicts over sexual and aggressive impulses, Mitchell's approach attends to the wishes and needs of both analysand and analyst.
- The tensions between the hopes and dreads of the two participants, and how they are worked through, are the medium of change in analysis.
- The analytic process is at once personal and interpersonal, a view that draws together object relations theories, self psychology and existential psychoanalysis.
- Two revolutions are joined: a theoretical one asking what the patient needs, and a metatheoretical one asking what the analyst knows, which recasts the analyst's authority in a constructivist view of the analytic situation.
- The self has become the central concept through which contemporary psychoanalysis addresses meaning, and it is understood as both multiple and continuous.
What it shows
- 1988
Stephen A. Mitchell introduced Relational-conflict model
Mitchell's own model of conflict: the clash is between relational ties and loyalties, not between drives and defences. He set it against both drive-conflict theory and developmental-arrest theory.