You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the past ten years, the relational paradigm of psychoanalytic thought and practice has emerged as an alternative to the classical model and Sullivan's interpersonal view of psychoanalysis. This paradigm borrows the depth psychology, developmental viewpoint, interpretive stance, and transference model of treatment from classical thought but eschews its biologically grounded metapsychology in favor of a view of human motivation grounded in the human need for interpersonal relationships. Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis presents “a sampling of issues being addressed by contemporary psychoanalytic clinicians and theoreticians from a relational point of view” (p. xxiv). Almost all the chapters begin with a statement of the classical view of an analytic issue that is found wanting and then offer a relational view that purports to redress the deficiencies of the classical position. Of the 14 chapters, two are theoretical; two, developmental; three focus on research evidence that is used to substantiate a relational view of child development; five apply relational theorizing to the analytic process, three to adult and two to child treatment; and the final two chapters present historical viewpoints on contemporary relational theorizing.
The first two chapters address the concept of the self. Stephen Mitchell, who along with Jay Greenberg gave the initial impetus to relational theorizing (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Mitchell, 1988),