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Psychoanalysis is not a unified theory, nor should it be. Psychoanalytic theories have often been the locations of culture wars where analysts within institutes, within national organizations and within international groups, simply don't find value in other ways of thinking and doing analytic work.
Over the last 50 years, particularly in the North American psychoanalytic groups, a diversity of thought and clinical work has emerged, shifting the landscape from one that was largely based on ego psychology. Heinz Kohut and self psychology, Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal psychoanalysis, and the developments of intersubjectivity and relational psychoanalysis have greatly influenced clinical work in North America and the rest of the psychoanalytic world both implicitly and explicitly. Melanie Klein's clinical work, under the influence of the British Contemporary Kleinians and the South American Kleinians, has also become part of the fabric of psychoanalytic thought within contemporary discussions. More recently, the work of the Barangers and field theory, as well as the influence of the French schools of psychoanalysis, have entered the evolving dialogue about clinical and theoretical ideas. This may lead to more sectarianism or to more discussion and the bridging of our groups.
In this Analyst at Work section we are presenting the clinical case of an analyst whose work fits roughly within the relational theoretical mould of American psychoanalysis. In the past 30 years, following the work of Greenberg, Mitchell and others, relational psychoanalysis has become a powerful clinical influence in North America, and now in Europe. Like Lacan and Klein and Kohut, the ideas have become a valuable part of our psychoanalytic lexicon.
The differences in terminology and use of concepts are not simply a linguistic matter, nor are they easily explained. Concepts like projective identification, once dismissed as a non-existent phenomenon, or as a concept that added nothing of clinic