Commentaries

Jay Greenberg's eloquent and tightly organized paper begins with a review of the history of psychoanalytic thinking. He emphasizes the unfortunate tendency of psychoanalysts to respond to each theoretical excess with an opposite and equally one-sided excess. Although he recognizes the possibility that the enthusiasms associated with this pattern may be helpful clinically, on balance he finds that the costs outweigh the benefits. He goes on to question whether his own “relational psychoanalysis” isn't itself repeating this pattern and finds evidence in the preferred clinical narratives of leaders in the field. These narratives revolve around the analyst's behaving “in some startling, unexpected, and highly personal way—when, in Irwin Hoffman's terms, he or she ‘throws away the book’ …” Greenberg traces the enthusiasm of relational analysts for this plot line to the relational critique that “deconstruct[s] many of the beliefs that lie at the core of the unobjectionable positive transference” and that therefore demands an alternative answer to the question of why the patient should want to be in analysis. Not surprisingly, the relationalist's answer is not because of transference love (objectionable positive transference), or because of a desire for insight or a hope for cure (unobjectionable positive transference), but rather because in each analytic dyad “a range of needs and desires are met … and … the motivation for treatment evolves” (the “real” relationship). That is, the patient comes to analysis seeking not a parent, nor a doctor, but a new friend.

The second half of Greenberg's paper consists primarily of two clinical vignettes—one from a case reported by Irwin Hoffman, the