Constructive dialogical interaction leads to increased strength and resilience in any intellectual discipline. This commentary considers the special section on contemporary structural and relational analysis and finds little constructive dialogue. These articles are characterized by over-broad generalizations, preemptive judgments, and premature conclusions. Many of the articles put relational ideas through the filter of structural psychoanalysis, in the process changing them beyond recognition.

The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep—all ordered society puts the passions to sleep—and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion, model against model. (Nietzsche, 1882/1974, p. 79)