Relational Psychoanalysis 3 Volume Set

Thanks to what I've been taught, I began my studies in psychoanalytic intersubjective theory with the bias that the focus would be on between rather than within. This book avoids that error by placing even emphasis on what happens inside the patient and between patient and therapist. The authors blend self psychology, object relations, and other fields to lay out an elegant exploration of interacting subjectivities.The conceptualization of psychopathology as either pathological structure OR missing psychic structure is particularly helpful and shows the common ground between self psychology (which tends to see things in terms of disintegration) and object relations (which at its worst regards the patient as a person full of toxic objects...a convenient notion when the therapy isn't going well!). The authors also contend that selfobject transferences aren't so much a type of transference as a dimension that runs through all transferences--indeed, all relationships to varying degrees.The book starts out with a lot of philosophy, in order to establish a context for perspectives presented later. Some of it was interesting, but most a rehash. The only real problem I had with this book is that it wasn't long enough. So I guess I'll have to read more books by these authors.