Object Relations and Social Relations: The Implications of the Relational Turn in Psychoanalysis, edited by Simon Clarke, Herbert Hahn, and Paul Hoggett,  Karnac Books, London, 2008,  232 pp.

The forms of psychoanalytic theory and practice that have been called “relational” emphasize the impact of the outside world on the human psyche; they are often contrasted with those that emphasize the innate constituents of the psyche that make us experience the outside world and its inhabitants in our own particular ways. As such, relational psychoanalysis dwells in the disputed border zone between inside and outside, which makes it well situated to offer psychoanalytic perspectives on social phenomena. In the introduction to Object Relations and Social Relations: The Implications of the Relational Turn in Psychoanalysis, Herbert Hahn, who edited the volume with Simon Clarke and Paul Hoggett, declares two aims: first, delineating relational psychoanalysis as a theory; and second, illustrating its implications in various fields. It is the second of these aims that is most fruitfully elaborated throughout this collection of essays.

The book grew out of a gathering of mostly British practitioners discussing a mostly American theoretical approach to psychoanalysis. Although in the introduction Hahn makes explicit the link to British object relations theories, one of the particularly compelling aspects of the volume is the breadth of theoretical perspectives from which the various authors draw. The opening chapters lead off with the usual suspects (Jessica Benjamin, Stephen Mitchell), but subsequent chapters cite theorists from Bion