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In Relationships in Development Stephen Seligman provides an excellent statement of what he terms “relational developmental psychoanalysis,” which he frequently contrasts with a classical view. For him “a relationship-oriented ‘two-person’ approach and clinical orientations about the analyst's oracular, abstinent position that followed from them: relationships, rather than drives, are the organizers and motivations of psychic life, and the individual and her environments—especially other people—are seen as inextricably intertwined” (p. 4). Moreover, the emphasis of classical theory on the intrapsychic “unduly turns attention from compelling social realities, just as it devalues real trauma” (p. 36).
For Seligman the relationship is primary, and he explores the implications this has for psychoanalytic theory. Seligman sees relationships in the context of development. Basing himself on direct observational research into infant-parent interaction and early infant-caregiver relationships, he states that “infants are born prepared to respond to and evoke care from parents and others; that the creation and maintenance of ties to other people are primary and central motivations for infants … and humans in general; and that the relationship between infants and caregivers is the fundamental unit within which early development occurs” (pp. 4-5).
Seligman challenges what he understands as the classical psychoanalytic view of the baby as “solipsistic and chaotic,” struggling with “primitive, endogenous libidinal and aggressive instincts” (p. 6). Citing Winnicott's notion that “there is no infant without the mother,” he insists the baby be understood as “inextricably engaged with its caregiving surround” (p. 54). Seligman's emphasis is on a natural adaptive dynamic in the meeting of children's physical and psychological growth within a facilitating environment. He finds Freud too focused on individual psychic development without affirming its necessary connection to the mother and