Relational psychoanalysis: a historical background.

Abstract

The author hopes Relational Psychoanalysis, as a broad emphasis on Self and Other, will not develop into another constraining and dogmatic school. In studying its sources I wish to maintain a dialectical view, and avoid ancestor worship. For me, its roots can be found both in the inner contradictions of theorists, such as Freud and Klein, and in the intense and generative dyads they created, particularly Freud-Ferenczi and Klein-Winnicott, where the defiance of the older colleague's authority led the younger one toward better understanding of relational dynamics. While both Fairbairn and Sullivan failed to draw full clinical conclusions from their innovative theoretical models, their work-as well as the contributions of Balint, Guntrip, Racker, Kohut and others, and the growing dissatisfaction with the traditional drive-defense model-helped Greenberg and Mitchell formulate in the 1980s their new relational integration. These ideas are most fully expressed in the Relational Track of NYU's postdoctoral psychoanalytic program, and in the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Among major issues debated by relational theorists are motivation (wish/need/drive), knowledge and truth in relationships (social constructivism), relational developmental models, the nature of intersubjectivity, the significance of feminism and postmodernism for psychoanalysis, and the implications of a relational approach for technique and for training.