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Relational psychoanalysis embodies a particular kind of paradoxical irony. The theory was largely born out of the recognition that psychic suffering and problems in living emerge from not only internal conflict over containing and expressing impulses but also from invalidating and stultifying external contexts (Mitchell, 1984). Thus, its aim was to allow a shifting of intrapsychic and interpersonal struggles so that neither was unilaterally focused on but instead the two could be simultaneously held and either aspect could be foregrounded as the analyst deemed necessary. Given its creation as a means of integrating theories and experience, it is unfortunate that, like many theories that engender a sort of tribalistic adherence, the field has moved away from its integrative spirit. Jill Bresler and Karen Starr clearly aim to bring relational theory back to its heterogeneous roots in their edited volume, Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Integration: An Evolving Synergy. As they claim at the outset, their aim is to be “inclusive rather than polarizing” (p. 3), and to broaden the scope through which psychoanalytic practitioners can utilize their ways of working with patients.
As Bresler points out in a chapter on marrying her training in CBT–which predated her analytic training–with psychoanalysis, it is easy to feel as though we are abandoning our analytic selves when we choose to intervene in active and perhaps even concrete ways. While we have largely decried Freud’s apprehension that “large-scale application of our therapy will compel us to alloy the pure gold of analysis freely with the copper of direct suggestion” (Freud, 1919, p. 168), many of us have internalized the phrase enough to worry that we are committing a crime against analytic humanity when we do take a direct approach with patients. Starr and Bresler link the relational movement’s attempts to integrate various theoretical orientations with Ferenczi’s initial ventures into using a variety of