Self-examination and self-critique: for psychoanalytic patients, this is the conduit to growth. Yet within the field, psychoanalysts haven’t sufficiently utilized their own methodology or subjected their own preferred approaches to systematic and critical self-examination. De-Idealizing Relational Theory attempts to rectify this for the relational field.
Key Features
- First of its kind: This book takes internal dissension and difference seriously rather than defensively.
- Critical engagement: It queries how theory lends itself to various characterizations and how psychoanalysts have participated in conveying these portrayals.
- Encouragement of self-critique: Engaging in psychoanalytic self-critique requires moving beyond deep-seated beliefs about the treatment process.
- Diverse approaches: Authors revisited early relational thinking, unpacked relational technique, and expanded views on relational theory.
Additional Information
Rather than saying that the other’s reading of relational theory is wrong, distorted, or a misrepresentation, this book is interested in querying how theory lends itself to such characterizations. How have psychoanalysts participated in conveying this portrayal to their critics? Might this dissension illuminate blind-spot(s) and highlight new areas of growth?
To step aside from ourselves, to question the assumed, to take the critiques of others seriously, demands more than an absence of defensiveness. It requires that we step into the shoes of the psychoanalytic Other and suspend not only our theories, but our emotional investment in them.
There are a range of ways in which our authors took up that challenge. Some revisited the assumptions that underlay early relational thinking and expanded their sources (Greenberg & Aron). Some took up specific aspects of relational technique and unpacked their roots and evolution (Mark, Cooper). Some offered an expanded view of what constitutes relational theory and technique (Seligman, Corbett, Grossmark).
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