Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis

Stephen A. Mitchell's 1997 book, published in the Relational Perspectives series, examines psychoanalysis after its shift from a one-person model of the mind to a two-person, interactive and relational view of the analytic situation. Once the analyst is understood as a participant in the interaction, the analyst's influence on the patient can no longer be avoided. The book asks how analysts can still protect the patient's autonomy and integrity, given how far they personally shape the process. Mitchell builds a critical, comparative framework for the many concepts recently proposed to describe what passes between analyst and analysand. He draws on the interpersonal and Kleinian traditions, on object relations theory and on contemporary Freudian thought. Taking the problem of influence as his guiding thread, he reconsiders the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, the ideals of anonymity and neutrality, the analyst's intentions, the nature of analytic knowledge and authority, and the clinical questions that gender and sexual orientation raise in a postmodern climate. He ends with a personal synthesis.