Interpersonal psychoanalysis

Abstract: Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis as well as a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to psychoanalytic thought. The focal point of clinical psychoanalysis has always been the patient's relationships with others. How do these relationships come about? How do they operate? How are they transformed? How are relationships with others to be understood within the framework of psychoanalytic theory? Greenberg and Mitchell argue that there have been two basic solutions to the problem of locating relationships within psychoanalytic theory: the drive model, in which relations with others are generated and shaped by the need for drive gratification and various relational models, in which relationships themselves are taken as primary and irreducible. The authors provide a masterful overview of the history of psychoanalytic ideas, in which they trace the divergences and the interplay between the two models and the intricate strategies adopted by the major theorists in their efforts to position themselves with respect to these models. They demonstrate further that many of the controversies and fashions in diagnosis and psychoanalytic technique can be fully understood only in the context of the dialectic between the drive model and the relational models. The authors are both psychoanalysts in private practice in New York. Jay Greenberg is a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry Psychoanalysis, and Psychology, and a clinical associate professor of psychology at New York University. Stephen A. Mitchell is a supervising analyst and on the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute, and a member of the faculty of the New York University Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.

Abstract: * Sigmund Freud and the Classical Psychoanalytic Tradition * Ego Psychology * Harry Stack Sullivan and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis * Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory * The British Object Relations School: W.R.D. Fairbairn and D.W. Winnicott * Psychologies of Identity and Self: Erik Erikson and Heinz Kohut * Contemporary Freudian Revisionists: Otto Kernberg, Roy Shafer, Hans Loewald, and Jacques Lacan * Controversies In Theory * Controversies in Technique

Abstract: STEPHEN A. MITCHELL AND MARGARET BLACK. Freud and Beyond. A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. Basic Books, New York, 1995, 293 pp., $27.50, ISBN 0-231 100221. Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret Black, both well-known psychoanalytic educators, show us in Freud and Beyond how psychoanalytic theory, which started in an age of rationality and objective truth-while also challenging these very valueshas gradually been turning toward a postmodern perspective. The authors choose to introduce each School from the perspective of their foremost spokespersons, leaving all the hotly debated controversies to the last chapters. This approach has the advantage of keeping the integrity of each theory and allowing readers to make up their own minds, and the disadvantage of a somewhat bland neutrality. This is especially striking in the first chapter on Freud's original theory in which the Freudian legend on how it all happened-for example, the much disputed Anna O. story, or why Freud gave up the seduction theory-is rigorously preserved. The reader is then introduced to the Schools of Ego Psychology-with Hartmann, Spitz, Mahler, and Jacobson as leading theorists-emphasizing the gradual transformation of Freud's instinct theories toward a more interpersonal bent. Generally, all along, the concepts of each new School are compared to Freud's original body of theories-to a fault. In chapter 5, we meet the British Objects Relations School represented by Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, and Balint where the importance of instincts are replaced by the equally fateful nature of the early maternal environment. Mitchell's co-authored 1983 book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, showed his expertise in that area, and here again, the clarity and succinctness of the exposition of various scholars' theoretical perspectives is outstanding. I do wonder why John Bowlby, whose attachment theory had such a decisive influence on our current thinking about human development, is only discussed in one page, while Melanie Klein is allocated the entire chapter 4. Erik Erikson and Heinz Kohut find themselves in the same chapter 6, both dealing with Identity and/or the Self. Here again, I found myself wishing that the authors had mentioned the recent discovery that the famous patient Mr. Z., who changed the course of his thinking, was Kohut himself. This reviewer was pleased, for her students' sake, to encounter an entire chapter on Harry Stack Sullivan-along with other Neo-Freudians-even though he is usually not viewed as having worked within the psychoanalytic fold. But Mitchell, known as a leading relational theorist himself, introduces Sullivan as the founder of interpersonal psychoanalysis. …

Abstract: Formulations concerning self have been a predominant concern of psychoanalytic theorizing over the past several decades; many different definitions have been employed, and many different perspectives explored. Despite the diversity of definitions and multiplicity of approaches, certain consistent themes and concerns have characterized postclassical theorizing and mark their difference from classical psychoanalysis. This article explores the view of the self as multiplex and discontinuous, as developed in both object relations theories and in interpersonal psychoanalysis. This approach to self is contrasted and interfaced with the view of the self as continuous and integral, as developed within self psychology.