Advances in Relational Psychotherapy

Relational psychoanalyzis in the USA and Britain: past, present and future

Andrew Samuels describes the history of relational psychoanalyzis as rooted in the transformative social and political movements of the twentieth century. He suggests that the civil rights movement, feminizm, gay liberation and radical student politics formed  powerful influences on the clinical values and ethics of the relevant generation of relational psychoanalyzis. Though analysis is not a crude relationship of ‘equals’, Andrew suggests that egalitarianism is the key historical factor. In common with other relational psychoanalyzts, Andrew questions the use of the terms ‘object’ and ‘subject’, and the ubiquity of ‘the infant’ in the discourse of traditional object relations based psychodynamic psychotherapy. In the UK, Samuels thinks, relational psychotherapists are engaged in an ambitious project to go beyond ‘schoolism’, working out a pluralistic synthesis of many routes to relationality. He ends by speculating on future developments.