Full Description
Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique invites relational theorists to contemplate the influence, overlaps, and relationship between relational theory and other perspectives. Self-critique was the focus of De-Idealizing Relational Theory. Decentering Relational Theory pushes critique in a different direction by explicitly engaging the questions of theoretical and clinical overlap - and lack thereof - with writers from other psychoanalytic orientations. In part, this comparison involves critique, but in part, it does not. It addresses issues of influence, both bidirectional and unidimensional. Our authors took up this challenge in different ways.
Like our authors in De-Idealizing, writers who contributed to Decentering were asked to move beyond their own perspective without stereotyping alternate perspectives. Instead, they seek to expand our understanding of the convergences and divergences between different relational perspectives and those of other theories.
Whether to locate relational thought in a broader theoretical envelope, make links to other theories, address critiques leveled at us, or push relational thinking forward, our contributors thought outside the box. The kinds of comparisons they were asked to make were challenging. We are grateful to them for having taken up this challenge. Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists across the theoretical spectrum.
Contents
Introduction Lewis Aron, Sue Grand, and Joyce Slochower 1. Trauma as radical inquiry Sue Grand 2. Otherness within psychoanalysis: On recognizing the critics of relational psychoanalysis Donnel B. Stern 3. Reflections and directions: An interview of Jessica Benjamin by Sue Grand Jessica Benjamin and Sue Grand 4. Toward a more fully integrative and contextual relational paradigm Paul Wachtel 5. The pathologizing tilt: Undertones of the death instinct in relational trauma theory Sophia Richman 6. The injurious impact of failed witnessing: Reflections on Richman's "pathologizing tilt" Sam Gerson 7. Don't throw out the baby! External and internal, attachment and sexuality Galit Atlas 8. Multiplicity and integrity: Does an anti-developmental tilt still exist in relational psychoanalysis? Donna M. Orange 9. Reflections on relational psychoanalysis: A work in progress Anthony Bass & Adrienne Harris 10. Beyond Tolerance in Psychoanalytic Communities: Reflexive Skepticism & Critical Pluralism Lewis Aron
