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Welcome to Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 33-1. Glancing at the roster of projects that are already underway, in this volume we will celebrate milestones in relational psychoanalysis, visit the evolution of foundational thinkers’ contributions, welcome provocations, reflect on the place of psychoanalysis amid interminable social conflict and climate threat, explore new territory in theory and clinical practice, and interrogate the insidious fault lines of our institutional structures with an eye on nothing less than, to borrow our founder Stephen Mitchell’s words, a revolution in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues continues to evolve with a generative mix of hope and dread, guided by our authors’ eloquence and our readers’ enthusiasm for spirited dialogue.
This year, 2023, marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Greenberg and Mitchell’s classic text, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, which launched the Relational movement. Many of our readers came to the field when this book was already firmly established in the relational canon. Yet at the time of publication, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory landed with a mix of shock and awe. Reviews alternatively heralded the authors’ synthesis of classical and object relations theory, championed the emergence of a pluralist and comparative approach, admired the project’s scope while questioning the fate of unconscious conflict were a relational turn to take root, or flat-out refuted the book along staunchly sectarian lines.
Greenberg and Mitchell’s volume lit the flame which ultimately sparked a revolution in psychoanalysis. Mitchell became torchbearer for this emerging paradigm and in 1991, working closely with an extraordinary cohort of first-generation relational thinkers, founded Psychoanalytic Dialogues. For the last 32 years, this journal has charted the emergence and development of relational thought. Our practice of presenting papers alongside discussions has led to consonante as well as di