Interview with Morris Eagle

Safran: Hi Morris. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. As we were setting up the Skype connection, I was thinking about your most recent book, From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and your book Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis, published in 1984, and it seems to me that they make nice bookends. Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis was a real classic. In some ways, it's linked in my mind with Greenberg and Mitchell's book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, as marking an important shift that was starting to take place in psychoanalysis toward more interpersonal and relational perspectives. I think your most recent book has the makings of a similar type of classic. It provides a clear, comprehensive perspective on where psychoanalysis began and how it has evolved. It's synthetic, balanced, and at the same time, in your trademark style, very critical, in a constructive way.

Thinking back to where psychoanalysis was at the time that your 1984 book was published, I was wondering, what, from your perspective, stands out as the most important changes that have taken place? What's happened in the field that has surprised you? Have there been developments that you did not anticipate, or are there developments that looked promising then and now look disappointing to you?

Eagle: My sense right now is that what's happened mainly in the last 25 or so years has largely been a continuation of what was apparent then. That is, the emergence of a relational point of view and its increasing influence in psychoanalysis, a continuation of a self-psychology perspective, and so on. You noticed in the most recent book I don't have much to say about the work of Bion or Lacan, which I know is very popular in certain circles. I'll explain why in a moment—although the easy answer is that I've made attempts to try to understand both and life is relatively short and one has