Relational Spaces, Institutions and Professional Groupings
New York University (NYU) features the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Current faculty members in the Relational Track are Lewis Aron, Beatrice Beebe, Jessica Benjamin, Philip M. Bromberg, Muriel Dimenv, Morris Eagle, James Fosshage, Adrienne E. Harris, Irwin Z. Hoffman, Frank Lachmann, Donna M. Orange, Jeremy D. Safran, Andrew Samuels, Donnel B. Stern, and Paul L. Wachtel. The Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral Program is the graduate organisation of the above program. Mitchell joined with Emmanuel Ghent, Philip Bromberg, James Fosshage, and Bernard Friedland to form the relational track at NYU in 1989.
The William Alanson White Institute founded 1943 in New York as an alternative to mainstream Freudian psychoanalysis by Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Harry Stack Sullivan, David Rioch, Janet M. Rioch, and Clara Thompson as the centre of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis. Both Donnel B. Stern and Philip M. Bromberg are graduates of the Institute. Contemporary Psychoanalysis is the Institute’s journal.
The Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity was founded by George E. Atwood, Beatrice Beebe, Bernard Brandchaft, James Fosshage, Frank Lachmann, and Robert D. Stolorow in 1987. All members had been influenced by self-psychology but the outcome of the collaboration has been what is known as Intersubjective Psychoanalysis. Donna M. Orange is a graduate of the Institute.
The Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies in NY offers the only exclusively relational training program in the New York City Metropolitan Area and includes key players Jessica Benjamin, Margaret Black and Jody Messler Davies on its Faculty. They say, “Over the past 30 years we have seen an evolutionary shift in the basic assumptions underlying the practice of dynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Where once the patient’s unconscious process was the exclusive focus of psychoanalytic work, contemporary practitioners have shifted their attention to the intersubjective arena in which the patient’s internal object world meets and engages the object world of the analyst’s.
The exchange between relational psychoanalysis and attachment has been very prominent in the USA. Two highly influential protagonists are Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann on one hand, and the Boston Change Process Study Group on the other. These pioneers have focused on how the analysis of interaction between infant and caregiver can shed light on the implicit/procedural/non-conscious encodings of interpersonal expectations as manifested in the analytic relationship. Infancy research, developmental psychology and attachment theory are connected to relational thinking via theories of the intersubjective and mutually regulating influence of the mother/carer and baby dyad, which forms a template for relationships and capacity for affect regulation throughout life.
The Bowlby Centre in London, UK offers a psychotherapy training based in the intersection of relational psychoanalysis and attachment based therapy. This organisation was founded by John Southgate and Kate White in 1989 with the support of John Bowlby’s supervision.
Also in London, The Minster Centre for Integrative Psychotherapy places an emphasis on Relational Psychoanalysis in its M.A programme. The Metanoia Institute also includes a relational perspective in its trainings.
The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy is a membership based umbrella organisation for clinicians wishing to contribute or explore relational approaches to psychotherapy, with outposts in several countries. The IARPP publishes an influential online discussion of relational theory and practice – their colloquium – which is open to the members of the association. This attracts writer-clinicians from many of the relational schools. They also host a major international conference on developments in relational theory. They position themselves thus: “While the term relational was initially used to bridge theories of internal object relations and the intersubjective field, in the past decade its meaning and scope have evolved dramatically, opening myriad questions for further study. The term “relational” applies, most broadly, on three levels:
- The understanding that all ideas, including psychoanalytic wisdom, are historical, linguistic, political and contextual.
- An appreciation that individual experiences and intrapsychic structures derive largely from and are transformations of relationships with significant others.
- The discovery that therapeutic change operates, at the same time, both intrapsychically and interpersonally and is most usefully explored in terms of the evolving relationship between patient and therapist.
Fundamental to this outlook is an appreciation that all ideas, including psychoanalytic conceptions and accumulated wisdom, are historical, linguistic, political, and contextual. Individual personality and intrapsychic structures are constructed and derive substantially from personal transformations that come into being in the context of human relationships.”
Journals
Psychoanalytic Dialogues is an international journal offering relational perspectives to Psychoanalysis. It was founded by Stephen A. Mitchell. Some of the editors are Neil Altman, Anne Alvarez, Lewis Aron, Beatrice Beebe, Jessica Benjamin, Sidney Blatt, Philip M. Bromberg, Morris Eagle, James Fosshage, Glen O. Gabbard, Adrienne E. Harris, Irwin Z. Hoffman, Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Thomas H. Ogden, Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Andrew Samuels Jeremy D. Safran, Donnel B. Stern, Robert D. Stolorow, and Robert S. Wallerstein. Psychoanalytic Dialogues was launched in the late 1980s and began to publish in 1991.
The Bowlby Centre is responsible for the joint venture with Karnac Books to publish the journal Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis that welcomes contributions from colleagues of all clinical orientations that further attachment-based relational psychotherapy and counselling.
The International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology is published by the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Their executive board features Doris Brothers and James Fosshage. The editorial board of the journal includes Beatrice Beebe, James Fosshage, and Joseph D. Lichtenberg. George E. Atwood, Donna M. Orange, and Robert D. Stolorow are the Philosophy Editors.