Summary:
An analysis of relational psychoanalysis
Object relations theory (i.e., emphasizing the internalized world of early relationships) and interpersonal psychoanalysis (i.e., focusing on the here-and-now of observable interaction) both shared a radical premise: They understood the person as fundamentally embedded in a social context rather than as an isolated individual driven by impulses (Mitchell, 1988). In their landmark study, Greenberg and Mitchell sought to differentiate a new, relational perspective from these existing schools (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983). It was from the melding of these two streams that relational thinking was born. This synthesis was soon enriched and expanded by feminist theory, queer studies, gender theory, and other social, philosophical, political, cross-cultural, and attachment frameworks (Aron & Harris, 2005; Benjamin, 1988; Chodorow, 1978).
Relational psychoanalysis is a meta-theory and clinical approach holding that human experience, including the experience of self, is fundamentally constituted in and through relationships with others (Mitchell, 1988, 2000). The isolated individual of classical drive theory is replaced by a person always already embedded in a social, cultural, and relational matrix. This has profound clinical implications: The analyst's neutrality gives way to engaged participation; the analyst's subjectivity is recognized as an inevitable and therapeutic presence; and the therapeutic relationship itself, with its enactments, disruptions, and repairs, becomes the primary vehicle of change (Aron, 1996; Bromberg, 1998; Ogden, 1994). Thus, relational psychoanalysis holds that we are conceived in relationship, formed in relationship, harmed in relationship, and transformed through relationship. It honors the interdependence of the dyad, acknowledging that we cannot become ourselves by ourselves; we require the gaze of a trusted other to bridge the gap into self-possession (Benjamin, 1988, 2004; Ghent, 1990).
References:
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