Relational Perspectives
About the Book Series
Founding Editor:
Stephen Mitchell
Editor Emeritus:
Lewis Aron
Series Editors:
Adrienne Harris
Steven Kuchuck
Eyal Rozmarin
The Relational Perspectives Book Series (RPBS) publishes books that grow out of or contribute to the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. The term relational psychoanalysis was first used by Greenberg and Mitchell to bridge the traditions of interpersonal relations, as developed within interpersonal psychoanalysis and object relations, as developed within contemporary British theory. But, under the seminal work of the late Stephen A. Mitchell, the term relational psychoanalysis grew and began to accrue to itself many other influences and developments. Various tributariesโinterpersonal psychoanalysis, object relations theory, self psychology, empirical infancy research, feminism, queer theory, sociocultural studies and elements of contemporary Freudian and Kleinian thoughtโflow into this tradition, which understands relational configurations between self and others, both real and fantasied, as the primary subject of psychoanalytic investigation.
ใWe refer to the relational tradition, rather than to a relational school, to highlight that we are identifying a trend, a tendency within contemporary psychoanalysis, not a more formally organized or coherent school or system of beliefs. Our use of the term relational signifies a dimension of theory and practice that has become salient across the wide spectrum of contemporary psychoanalysis. Now under the editorial supervision of Adrienne Harris, Steven Kuchuck and Eyal Rozmarin, the Relational Perspectives Book Series originated in 1990 under the editorial eye of the late Stephen A. Mitchell. Mitchell was the most prolific and influential of the originators of the relational tradition. Committed to dialogue among psychoanalysts, he abhorred the authoritarianism that dictated adherence to a rigid set of beliefs or technical restrictions. He championed open discussion, comparative and integrative approaches, and promoted new voices across the generations. Mitchell was later joined by the late Lewis Aron, also a visionary and influential writer, teacher and leading thinker in relational psychoanalysis.
ใIncluded in the Relational Perspectives Book Series are authors and works that come from within the relational tradition, those that extend and develop that tradition, and works that critique relational approaches or compare and contrast them with alternative points of view. The series includes our most distinguished senior psychoanalysts, along with younger contributors who bring fresh vision. Our aim is to enable a deepening of relational thinking while reaching across disciplinary and social boundaries in order to foster an inclusive and international literature. ใใ
Creating Bodies: Eating Disorders as Self-Destructive Survival
1st Edition
By Katie Gentile
August 16, 2006
Amid the welter of clinical studies, memoirs, and other death-defying tales of eating disorders, we remain unclear about the relationships among trauma, anorexia, and bulimia, and about the psychological pathways to recovery. Creating Bodies offers the gripping story of healing and ...
Relational Psychoanalysis, Volume 2: Innovation and Expansion
1st Edition
Edited
By Lewis Aron, Adrienne Harris
April 11, 2005
The "relational turn" has transformed the field of psychoanalysis, with an impact that cuts across different schools of thought and clinical modalities. In the six years following publication of Volume 1, Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition, relational theorizing has continued ...
Child Therapy in the Great Outdoors: A Relational View
1st Edition
By Sebastiano Santostefano
November 12, 2004
Building on relational conceptualizations of enactment and on developmental research that attests to the role of embodied, nonverbal language in the meanings children impute to their experiences, Sebastiano Santostefano offers this compelling demonstration of effective child therapy conducted in ...
Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education
1st Edition
By Emanuel Berman
August 02, 2004
Over the past century psychoanalysis has gone on to establish training institutes, professional societies, accreditation procedures, and models of education, thus bringing into uneasy alliance all three impossible pursuits. In Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education, ...
Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity
1st Edition
By Stephen A. Mitchell
December 01, 2003
In his final contribution to the psychoanalytic literature published two months before his untimely death on December 21, 2000, the late Stephen A. Mitchell provided a brilliant synthesis of the interrelated ideas that hover around, and describe aspects of, the relational matrix of human experience...
Soul on the Couch: Spirituality, Religion, and Morality in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
1st Edition
Edited
By Charles Spezzano, Gerald J. Gargiulo
April 01, 2003
Ever since Freud put religion on the couch in "The Future of an Illusion," there has been an uneasy peace, with occasional skirmishes, between these two great disciplines of subjectivity. As prime meaning givers, God and the unconscious have vied for supremacy in our thinking about ourselves, ...
Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis
1st Edition
By Donnel B. Stern
April 01, 2003
In this powerful and wonderfully accessible meditation on psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and social constructivism, Donnel Stern explores the relationship between two fundamental kinds of experience: explicit verbal reflection and "unformulated experience," or experience we have not yet reflected on...
Affect in Psychoanalysis: A Clinical Synthesis
1st Edition
By Charles Spezzano
February 01, 2003
Drawing on the writings of Freud, Fairbairn, Klein, Sullivan, and Winnicott, Spezzano offers a radical redefinition of the analytic process as the intersubjective elaboration and regulation of affect. The plight of analytic patients, he holds, is imprisonment within crude fantasy elaborations of ...
Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation: Emotional Engagement in the Analytic Process
1st Edition
By Karen J. Maroda
December 01, 2002
Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation demonstrates how interpersonal psychoanalysis obliges analysts to engage their patients with genuine emotional responsiveness, so that not only the patient but the analyst too is open to ongoing transformation through the analytic experience. In so doing, ...
The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective
1st Edition
By Sue Grand
June 01, 2002
Why is it that victims of abuse so often become perpetrators, and what can psychoanalysis offer to these survivor-perpetrators, whose criminal conduct seems to transcend the possibilities of empathic psychoanalytic inquiry. In The Reproduction of Evil, Sue Grand engages these deeply troublesome ...
A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis
1st Edition
By Lewis Aron
December 01, 2001
In this richly nuanced assessment of the various dimensions of mutuality in psychoanalysis, Aron shows that the relational approach to psychoanalysis is a powerful guide to issues of technique and therapeutic strategy. From his reappraisal of the concepts of interaction and enactment, to his ...
The Therapist as a Person: Life Crises, Life Choices, Life Experiences, and Their Effects on Treatment
1st Edition
Edited
By Barbara Gerson
July 01, 2001
In this collection of powerfully illuminating and often poignant essays, contributors candidly discuss the impact of central life crises and identity concerns on their work as therapists. With chapters focusing on identity concerns associated with the body-self (body size, ethnicity, sexual ...