Hardback - £105.00

Publication date:

20 May 2005

Length of book:

384 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9780765701084

This volume is the first concentrated effort to offer a philosophical critique of relational and intersubjective perspectives in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. The distinguished group of scholars and clinicians assembled here are largely preoccupied with tracing the theoretical underpinnings of relational psychoanalysis, its divergence from traditional psychoanalytic paradigms, implications for clinical reform and therapeutic practice, and its intersection with alternative psychoanalytic approaches that are co-extensive with the relational turn. Because relational and intersubjective perspectives have not been properly critiqued from within their own schools of discourse, many of the contributors assembled here subject advocates of the American Middle School to a thorough critique of their theoretical assumptions, limitations, and practices. If not for any other reason, this project is of timely significance for the field of psychoanalysis and the competing psychotherapies because it attempts to address the philosophical undergirding of the relational movement.
All those with an interest in the philosophical underpinnings of current psychoanalytic debates and controversies will want to read Relational and Intersubjective Perspectives in Psychoanalysis. These papers are often tendentious and contentious, but perhaps just on this account they provoke thought and force a clarification of fundamental assumptions and a confrontation with key questions in our field.