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In their different ways, the essays in this tome address Axel Honneth's suggestion that, through its object relations variant, psychoanalysis grants critical theory an Archimedean point. By shifting their focus from material conditions to cultural superstructure, critical theorists became aware of their dependence on the Hegelian metaphysic that underlies Marx. Hegel, however, was a conservative, as he thought that the mind within which the dialectic occurs cannot be critically reflective in a full sense. Donald Winnicott's formulation of object relations theory can bridge Hegelian metaphysic and the Frankfurt School's activist ends because it shows how both the ultimate connection of self and world and the reflective and critical stance manifest in individual development. Winnicott, then, lends critical theory a dialectic basis without Hegel's reliance on the unquestionable wisdom of the current thesis and on the violent sovereign state as the final arbitrator. It is a perspective that can be particularly suited to a theory invested in the constant critique of culture as a way of improving the living world.
In the Introduction, the editors, Amy Allen and Brian O'Connor, trace the history of the relationship between critical theory and object relations psychoanalysis. While the materialist, Marxist orientation common to much critical theory does not easily match with the internally oriented perspective of psychoanalysis, the two traditions coalesced at several points, which the editors follow through the works of Adorno, Fromm and, finally, Honneth. Honneth's point of view, to which the assessment of Winnicott as conducive for critical theory is central, is reflected in the book's title through its reference to a Winnicottian catchphrase.
In the (reprinted) conversation with Honneth that constitutes the first chapter, Joel Whitebook challenges the alignment of object relational psychoanalysis with critical theory that Honneth advances. Whitebook argues that critical t