Relationality

Within the psychoanalytic literature, the past several decades have witnessed an explosion of new data, concepts, and theories bearing on the myriad ways in which people relate to, interact with, and, in their interior structures, are even composed of, each other. These contributions have emerged from various traditions and have been cast in different terminologies. Attachment, object-seeking, intersubjectivity, field theory, systems theory, the interpersonal field, now moments, and relational moves figure prominently among the terms that have been invoked to describe different facets of the relational matrix within which human experience transpires. been little systematic effort at critical synthesis. It is the need for just such synthesis that animates Stephen A. Mitchell, a major architect of what has come to be known as relational psychoanalysis. In previous books, Mitchell has contributed to naming, defining, and elaborating the relational turn in psychoanalysis both in theory and in clinical practice. Now, in this study, Mitchell provides a broad integrative framework for understanding the relationships among recent psychoanalytic concepts that delineate various aspects of human relatedness.