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Here we have a book that strives and mostly succeeds, to capture the scope and the marrow of Relational Psychoanalysis in all of its media: practice, theory and research. A book with the title Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis; A Guide to Practice, Study, and Research can seem both awe inspiring and confusing at the same time. To develop a broad and deep, comprehensive evaluation of any theory or mode of thought and praxis and to then further break that theory down into essential components, would be an overwhelming task. This undertaking for Relational Psychoanalysis presents special challenges, indeed. Relational thought was born in reaction to the perceived authoritarianism of other models of psychological and analytic thought. One must avoid reducing the definitions of postmodernism to a critique of metanarratives since then it will be almost impossible to compare the truthfulness of one story-line or theory with another. The least that a psychoanalyst might expect from a text-like work is an adherence to objectivity and a desire for all the so-called “facts” in a vivid and hierarchical manner.
The pervasive multiplicity of Relational Theory seems a further obstacle to classification. Multiplicity pervades the relational world. It is found in multiple theories of motivation; the notion of multiple selves; multiple perspectives; the critique on binary thinking especially
regarding gender and sexuality; and multi-cultural and social identities. As damning to codification as multiplicity is, definitional plurality poses even more challenges. Consider the many ways that we can think of “the analytic third’. It can represent a point-of-view like an opening or clearing between two subjectivities (Ogden, 1987). Similarly, it can represent the collective opinions at the Institute where one has trained (Aron, 1996) or it can represent the role of social forces (Altman, 2010) that shape a way of thinking. Further, Barsness emphasizes that “all writings on t