Where are we going, where have we been?

Abstract

This editor’s introduction maps out the author’s reflections on the past trajectory of Psychoanalytic Perspectives while also charting out potential directions for its future. She reviews some of the influences that have helped shape the current context of contemporary psychoanalysis, and elucidates the dilemma facing the current Relational psychoanalytic moment, as she sees it. Relational psychoanalysts have been walking a tightrope, squeezed by the perils of the twin pitfalls of relativism and dogma, and the author advocates for more clarity and dialogue around the central ethics and beliefs that hold this theoretical perspective together to create a coherent Relational psychoanalytic identity.

Keywords:

• relational psychoanalytic identity
• contemporary relational psychoanalysis
• relativism and constructivism in relational theory
• Stephen Mitchell
• psychoanalytic theory.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Amy Schwartz Cooney, PhD, for her incisive comments, and Karen Perlman, PhD, LP, for her insightful revisions of and contributions to earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

¹ Throughout this introduction, I will use “capital R” Relational to connote the New York School or North American Relational psychoanalysis, as first defined by Mitchell (1988), and “small r” relational to connote the umbrella perspective tying together many disparate schools that have been influenced by and become defined by perspectival philosophy (See Kuchuck & Sopher, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Sopher

Rachel Sopher, LCSW is Board Director, Faculty and Supervisor, National Institute for the Psychotherapies; and Faculty, Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and maintains a private practice in New York City.