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This book is intelligent, kind-spirited, and forward-thinking, if imperfectly integrated. The subtitle suggests that the author will use relational concepts to comment on psychoanalytic training. And Berman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa and Training Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute, does just that. But he also wants to show that the idea of a two-person psychology has been an active, if antiestablishment, presence in psychoanalysis since the early days of Freud. This ambition leads him to provide a long discussion of two early dyads that, in the end, splits the book into two separable entities.
Readers looking for a restrictive definition of the term ‘relational’ will not find it here, nor is such fine distinction Berman's intent. For him, the word is inclusive. Whether relational psychoanalysis, intersubjective approach, or two-person psychology are spoken of, the main point is the same: in every psychoanalytic dyad, there are always two mutually influencing subjectivities, each with fantasies, ideas, previous and simultaneous external relationships, and shifting affective states. Every analysis proceeds within this complex matrix.
Berman goes to greater lengths to show that the concept of the relationship between analyst and analysand has been an important consideration for theorists since the beginning of analytic history. His comments about the struggles between Freud and Ferenczi, on the one hand, and Klein and Winnicott, on the other, are fascinating to read. They are also painful, as the anguish of both Ferenczi and Winnicott becomes apparent when their pleas for the importance of external reality and interpersonal dynamics as essential aspects of psychological development fall on deaf ears and skeptical minds.
The essence of Berman's lengthy exposition can be summarized in his own words:
These days, we all seem to be constantly negotiating our way between the inner world of fantasy (Freud) and the impact of family and environm