Repetition, Negotiation, Relationship

Abstract

Paul Russell, who died ten years ago, had inspired and profoundly influenced thinking about clinical process among many analysts and therapists in the Boston area through his popular paper presentations at local programs, almost none of which were ever published or widely disseminated. My introductory essay (as does Barbara Pizer's) accompanies two of Russell's papers, printed in this issue in their original, unretouched form so that a wider audience may come into contact with Russell and discover the rich theoretical grounding, the clinical aptness, the prescient wisdom, in Russell's unconventional and direct writing. After offering a portrait of the extraordinary man Paul Russell was—brilliant, modest, humane, and generous—I underscore some of the essential ideas running through, and tacitly organizing, Russell's papers: affect and affective competence; the relational context for developing affective competence, and the implications for clinical process; trauma; repetition as crisis (“crunch”) and opportunity; paradox; negotiation; intimacy; loss and grieving.

Keywords:

• Russell
• repetition
• affect
• negotiation
• crunch
• process
• paradox

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stuart A. Pizer

Stuart A. Pizer, Ph.D. is Faculty, Supervising Analyst, and former President, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.