Relational Psychoanalysis as Political Resistance

The intellectual movement known as the interpretative turn is used to develop an understanding of relational psychoanalysis as a way of preparing patients and practitioners to resist the dominant way of being and political structures of the current era. This interpretation is explored by discussing a newly emerging configuration of the self—the flattened, multiple self—and its connections to 1) the growing influence of neoliberal proceduralism, and 2) an increase in both political indifference and political fundamentalism in the general population. By providing a brief history of relational psychoanalysis that highlights its moral vision and political implications, and by drawing on film, television commercials, online gaming, and psychotherapy practices, it is argued that relational practice can oppose and offer an alternative to a neoliberal way of being, the political arrangements it serves, and the psychological attitudes that enable it. By explicitly recognizing some of the political meanings of relational practice it is hoped that practitioners will be helped to develop political practices within the clinical hour more directly than in the past.