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This article illuminates the ways in which relational psychoanalysis has remained caught in the grip of the Cartesian, isolated-mind philosophy it has sought to subvert. Residual Cartesianism is examined in the work of Sullivan and Fair-bairn, in “present-moment” thinking, in the mutual-recognition model of intersubjectivity, in the concept of projective identification, and in the mixed models prevalent in relational theorizing. The aim of this critique is to move relational theory toward becoming ever more contextual.
One of the greatest difficulties encountered in bringing about favorable change is this almost inescapable illusion that there is a perduring, unique, simple existent self, [which is] in some strange fashion, the patient's, or the subject person's, private property.