Book
Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis: An Integration
Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis: An Integration, published by Harvard University Press in 1988, is Stephen A. Mitchell's attempt to bring order to a field he saw as fragmented among competing theories. It builds on the distinction he and Jay Greenberg drew in Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory between the drive model, in which relations with others arise from and are shaped by the pursuit of drive gratification, and relational models, in which relations themselves are primary and irreducible. Mitchell argues that the drive model has outlived its usefulness, and that the relational traditions, developed piecemeal by authors who seldom recognised their shared assumptions, can be woven into one relational-conflict model: interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theory, self psychology and existential psychoanalysis. In this model the mind is embedded in a relational matrix with three dimensions: the self, the other and the space between them. The book rethinks in these terms sexuality, infantilism and narcissism, the influence of early experience, the relation of past and present, the interweaving of illusion and actuality, the place of will, the repetition of painful experience, and the nature of the analytic situation and of change in analysis.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalysis has fragmented into more theories than the field can use, and needs an integrating framework.
- The drive model, which derives relations with others from the pursuit of drive gratification, has outlived its usefulness.
- Interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theory, self psychology and existential psychoanalysis share relational assumptions their authors seldom recognised, and can be integrated in a single relational-conflict model.
- The mind is embedded in a relational matrix with three dimensions: the self, the other and the space between them.
- Sexuality, infantilism and narcissism are reinterpreted as relational phenomena rather than expressions of drives.
- The repetition of painful experience, the relation of past and present, and the nature of change in analysis are explained in relational terms.
What it shows
- 1983
Stephen A. Mitchell introduced Relational psychoanalysis
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.
- 1988
Stephen A. Mitchell introduced Relational matrix
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.
- 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.
Harry Stack Sullivan influenced Stephen A. Mitchell
Mitchell trained in the interpersonal tradition at the White Institute, which Sullivan co-founded. Sullivan's interpersonal theory is one of the two roots of the relational model he and Greenberg described, and one of the strands his 1988 integration draws together.
Relational-conflict model derives from Relational matrix
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.