Book
Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition
Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition (The Analytic Press, 1999) is volume 14 of the Relational Perspectives Book Series. In it, Stephen A. Mitchell and Lewis Aron collect seventeen papers that they present as the founding texts of relational psychoanalysis. The publisher's account sets the volume against a broad change in American psychoanalysis over the preceding fifteen years. In theory, the field turned from classical formulations grounded in Freud's drive theory toward models of mind and development built on object relations. In practice, it turned from the classical principles of neutrality, abstinence and anonymity toward an interactive view of the analytic situation, with the relationship and its reciprocal affective currents at the centre. The book traces these changes to a group of analysts who sought to integrate interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theories and psychoanalytic feminism. They never declared themselves a school, but they produced a distinct and influential tradition of thought and clinical practice. The contributors are Eigen, Hoffman, Stern, Chodorow, Greenberg, Mitchell, Benjamin, Ghent, Aron, Davies and Frawley, Harris, Pizer, Stolorow and Atwood, Bromberg, Renik, Spezzano and Ogden. Among their subjects are the analyst's subjectivity and the patient's experience of it, recognition and intersubjectivity, unformulated experience, narcissism, masochism and surrender, dissociation in the treatment of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, gender, paradox and the analytic third. The editors introduce each paper and place it in its historical context, and each author adds a new afterword on how their thinking has developed since. A Hebrew translation appeared in 2013.
Main ideas
- In the fifteen years before 1999, American psychoanalytic theory moved away from classical formulations grounded in Freud's drive theory toward models of mind and development built on object relations.
- Clinical practice moved in step, from neutrality, abstinence and anonymity toward an interactive view of the analytic situation centred on the relationship and its reciprocal affective currents.
- The relational tradition grew out of efforts to integrate interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theories and psychoanalytic feminism; its authors never declared a school, yet formed a distinct and influential tradition.
- The volume brings together, for the first time, seventeen seminal papers by the tradition's major authors, on such themes as the analyst's subjectivity, recognition and intersubjectivity, unformulated experience, dissociation, gender, paradox and the analytic third.
- Each paper is framed by an editors' introduction setting it in its historical context and a new afterword in which its author describes how their thinking has developed since.
What it shows
- 1999
Stephen A. Mitchell collaborated with Lewis Aron
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.
Lewis Aron 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).
Jessica Benjamin developed Relational psychoanalysis
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.