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.
A Meeting Of Minds is a guide to relational psychoanalysis.
The relational approach is a synthesis of Freudian, interpersonal, and object relations theories. It is predicated on the belief that “relational configurations [are] the bedrock of existence” (p. 59). From this vantage point, sexual and aggressive drives are seen as being experienced and expressed intrinsically within a relational context. Moreover, both psychic injury and healing are understood as occurring inevitably within a relational field. Intrapsychic and interpersonal experience are conceptualized as mutually active transforms of one another. Neither domain is privileged relative to the other.
Relational theory can thus be viewed as bridging the gaps among multiple domains: between classical Freudian drive and interpersonal theory, on one hand, and between interpersonal and object relations theory on the other.
Lewis Aron charts this complex theoretical and historical landscape with skill and care. His interest in and attention to relationships serve him well. Distinctions and convergences among the various approaches and theorists are outlined with great clarity. A particular strength of the book lies in its lucid review of the pioneering work of Sándor Ferenczi and Otto Rank. Their roles as the figurative mother and father of relational psychoanalysis are effectively highlighted.
Aron frames his presentation of this material in terms of the dialectics of mutuality and autonomy:
While both Ferenczi and Rank proposed fundamentally relational theories, Ferenczi's work leaned in the direction of mutuality, relationship, and communion whereas Rank's theory was more heavily weighted towards autonomy, individuation and agency. Ferenczi focused on the reciprocal processes operating between self and other; Rank's theory had to do with the emergence of the self within a relational context. (p. 160)