Relational Perspectives
About the Book Series
Series Editor: Steven Kuchuck
Founding Editor:
Stephen Mitchell
Editor Emeritus:
Lewis Aron
Former Editors:
Adrienne Harris
Eyal Rozmarin
The Relational Perspectives Book Series (RPBS) publishes books that grow out of or contribute to the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell first coined the term relational psychoanalysis as a way of identifying a common theme among an otherwise diverse group of theories that had never before been considered connected in any way. Each of these schools—primarily; interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theory, and self-psychology, emphasized a person’s embeddedness in the social context rather than the isolated individual with drives pressing for discharge as the main unit of study (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983).
Following his work with Greenberg, Mitchell (1988) began using the term relational psychoanalysis to also refer to a newly developing perspective that arose from a melding of British Object Relations theory with Interpersonal psychoanalysis, feminist, queer, gender and other social, philosophical, political, cross-cultural and attachment theories as well as empirical infancy research and elements of contemporary Freudian and Kleinian thought. In more recent years, aspects of Field theory and Intersubjective Systems theory, as well as understanding of oppression, economics, race and other systemic issues have also become integrated into this tradition, which understands relational configurations between self and others, both real and fantasied, as the primary subject of psychoanalytic investigation. This new and expanded perspective is sometimes referred to as "big R" Relational psychoanalysis in order to distinguish it from Mitchell’s original use of the term relational as an umbrella term for already existing theories (Kuchuck, 2021).
Originally, we referred to the Relational tradition, turn, or perspective rather than to a Relational school, to highlight that we were identifying a general trend or tendency within contemporary psychoanalysis, not a more formally organized or coherent system of beliefs. And given the centrality of the concept of analyst as subject and eschewing of positivism in Relational thinking, we recognize that no two Relationalists think or practice in exactly the same way. Still, while debated, Relational psychoanalysis (as differentiated from Greenberg and Mitchell’s initial use of the term), has arrived at a moment in time when some believe we can now rightly think of it as a proper theoretical orientation.
Now under the editorial supervision of Steven Kuchuck, the Relational Perspectives Book Series originated in 1990 through the efforts of the late Stephen A. Mitchell. Mitchell was not only the first, but also 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 major thinker in Relational psychoanalysis. Leading Relational scholars Adrienne Harris, Steven Kuchuck and Eyal Rozmarin eventually partnered with Aron as series editors.
Included in the Relational Perspectives Book Series are authors that come from within the relational/Relational traditions, those that extend and develop that scholarship, and works that critique these 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 thinking about theory and technique while reaching across disciplinary and social boundaries in order to foster an inclusive and international literature.
Works Cited
Greenberg, J.R. and Mitchell, S.A. (1983). Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuchuck, S. (2021). The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books.
Mitchell, S.A. (1988). Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis: An Integration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Adolescent Identities: A Collection of Readings
1st Edition
Edited
By Deborah L. Browning
September 11, 2014
Adolescent Identities draws the reader into the inner world of the adolescent to examine the process of identity formation through the various lenses of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The volume reveals there is no single "normal" adolescent, nor is there a ...
Bodies In Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension
1st Edition
Edited
By Frances Sommer Anderson
September 11, 2014
Bodies in Treatment is a challenging volume that brings into conceptual focus an "unspoken dimension" of clinical work - the body and nonverbal communication - that has long occupied the shadowy realm of tacit knowledge. By bringing visceral, sensory, and imagistic modes of emotional processing to ...
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1st Edition
By Stuart A. Pizer
September 11, 2014
In Building Bridges, Stuart A. Pizer gives much-needed recognition to the central role of negotiation in the analytic relationship and in the therapeutic process. Building on a Winnicottian perspective that comprehends paradox as the condition for preserving an intrapsychic and relational "...
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1st Edition
By Peter G. M. Carnochan
September 11, 2014
Despite a half-century of literature documenting the experience and meanings of countertransference in analytic practice, the concept remains a source of controversy. For Peter Carnochan, this can be addressed only by revisiting historical, epistemological, and moral issues intrinsic to the ...
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1st Edition
Edited
By Susan Coates, Jane Rosenthal, Daniel Schechter
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Drawing on research from a variety of domains - clinical studies of trauma, developmental psychopathology, interpersonal psychobiology, epidemiology, and social policy - September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds addresses especially the fundamental relationship of human bonds to trauma and underscores ...
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1st Edition
By Rochelle G. K. Kainer
September 11, 2014
The Collapse of the Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration is a rich and clinically detailed account of the therapeutic restoration of the self, and speaks to the healing process for analysts themselves that follows from Rochelle Kainer's sensitive integration of heretofore dissociated realms of ...
The Designed Self: Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Identities
1st Edition
By Carlo Strenger
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What can contemporary psychoanalysis bring to the understanding of Generation X, a cohort for whom the trivialization of a dizzying array of possible experiences teamed with the pressure to lead spectacular lives often leads to diffuse feelings of confusion, depression, and disorientation. ...
Comparative-Integrative Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective for the Discipline's Second Century
1st Edition
By Brent Willock
June 09, 2014
Finalist for the 2007 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship! This exceptionally practical and insightful new text explores the emerging field of comparative-integrative psychoanalysis. It provides an invaluable framework for approaching the currently fractious state of the ...
Getting From Here to There: Analytic Love, Analytic Process
1st Edition
By Sheldon Bach
June 09, 2014
It is clinical work with the most difficult patients - those with severe narcissistic, sadomasochistic, and borderline disorders - that poses the greatest challenge to the therapist's guiding assumptions about clinical process; indeed, such work often leads therapists to question beliefs and ...
Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis
1st Edition
By Steven H. Cooper
June 09, 2014
Despite the importance of the concept of hope in human affairs, psychoanalysts have long had difficulty accepting responsibility for the manner in which their various interpretive orientations and explanations of therapeutic action express their own hopes for their patients. In Objects of ...
Unconscious Fantasies and the Relational World
1st Edition
By Danielle Knafo, Kenneth Feiner
June 09, 2014
What is the role of unconscious fantasies in psychological development, in psychopathology, and in the arts? In Unconscious Fantasies and the Relational World, Danielle Knafo and Kenneth Feiner return to these interlinked questions with a specific goal in mind: a contemporary ...
Traumatic Ruptures: Abandonment and Betrayal in the Analytic Relationship
1st Edition
Edited
By Robin A. Deutsch
May 07, 2014
For much of its history, psychoanalysis has been strangely silent about sudden ruptures in the analytic relationship and their immediate and far-reaching effects for those involved. Such issues of betrayal and abandonment – the death of an analyst, a patient’s suicide, an ethical violation – ...