Sublime

We can no longer operate on the assumption that the Western capitalist culture of self-contained individualism is superior to all other cultural forms and continue to encode those values in the practice of psychoanalysis.

A traditional ego-psychology analysis typically focuses on analyzing the patient’s inner life as the main source of problems. In contrast, a relational analyst emphasizes not only the patient’s inner life, but also the mutual relational dynamics of the therapeutic interaction in the session.

Relational psychoanalytic models, sometimes referred to as intersubjective, do not view individuals as discrete centers of experience and action; instead, they assert that all self-experience is ontologically social. They challenge the “myth of the isolated mind” (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992, p. 7) and suggest that psychological experience is derived... See more

On Darwin's influence of Psychoanalysis

the relational perspective, is based on a core belief best expressed by Karl Popper: “While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” This basic belief leads people to assume that we all see things others miss, that disagreements are inevitable and valuable, that those disagreements will at ti... See more

Source: Sage Journals

The psychoanalysis of self psychology serves an implicit social function in seamlessly hiding the contradictions in the economic, political and cultural arrangements of our society by not analyzing them, and therefore allowing them to remain as unconscious determinants of suffering.