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 tributaries—interpersonal psychoanalysis, object relations theory, self psychology, empirical infancy research, feminism, queer theory, sociocultural studies and elements of contemporary Freudian and Kleinian thought—flow into this tradition, which understands relational configurations between self and others, both real and fantasied, as the primary subject of psychoanalytic investigation.
We 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.
Included 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.
Edited
By Adrienne Harris, Steven Botticelli
July 01, 2010
At the outset of World War I - the "Great War" - Freud supported the Austro-Hungarian Empire for which his sons fought. But the cruel truths of that bloody conflict, wrought on the psyches as much as the bodies of the soldiers returning from the battlefield, caused him to rethink his stance and ...
Edited
By Jill Salberg
March 25, 2010
In the relational literature, the subject of termination - the ending of an analysis - has received scant attention, and traditional Freudian or ego-psychological criteria are not always enough to assess the readiness to terminate therapy in the coconstructed, intersubjective analytic relationship....
By Marie T. Hoffman
December 13, 2010
Ever since its nascent days, psychoanalysis has enjoyed an uneasy coexistence with religion. However, in recent decades, many analysts have been more interested in the healing potential of both psychoanalytic and religious experience and have explored how their respective narrative underpinnings ...
By Steven H. Cooper
July 19, 2010
The field, as Steven Cooper describes it, is comprised of the inextricably related worlds of internalized object relations and interpersonal interaction. Furthermore, the analytic dyad is neither static nor smooth sailing. Eventually, the rigorous work of psychoanalysis will offer a fraught ...
By Karen E. Starr
April 15, 2010
Repair of the Soul examines transformation from the perspective of Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis, addressing the question of how one achieves self-understanding that leads not only to insight but also to meaningful change. In this beautifully written and thought-provoking book, Karen Starr ...
Edited
By George Goldstein, Helen Golden
December 21, 2009
An influential part of the New York psychoanalytic scene for more than 50 years, Sabert "Sabe" Basescu is regarded as an outstanding analyst and a significant proponent of the integration of existentialism and phenomenology into psychoanalytic theory and practice. Existential themes serve as a ...
By Adrienne Harris
December 04, 2008
Gender as Soft Assembly weaves together insights from different disciplinary domains to open up new vistas of clinical understanding of what it means to inhabit, to perform, and to be, gendered. Opposing the traditional notion of development as the linear unfolding of predictable stages, ...
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 ...
By James McLaughlin
April 20, 2005
Over the course of a 50-year career, James T. McLaughlin has sought to open the playing field of psychoanalytic exploration by treating unconscious processes as the very material from which we fashion meaningful lives. His unique, iconoclastic perspective, which challenged the conventions of his ...
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 ...
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 ...