ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book is remarkable in bringing together a diversity of psychoanalytic thinkers from all over the world. Jean Laplanche works out "three meanings of the word 'unconscious' in the framework of the general theory of seduction". The general theory of seduction seeks to give an account of the genesis of the psychosexual apparatus of the human being, starting from interhuman relationships and not from biological origins. Charles Hanly tries to explore the impact of the so-called relational turn on psychoanalytic understanding. Epistemologically and methodologically, the relational turn has good reasons because knowledge of persons, whether self or other, is grounded in the relations between persons. The conceptual innovations of relational theory are, no doubt, well-intentioned, serve useful purposes, and provide a highly salutary caution to analysts to treat their observations, feelings, and ideas about their patients with an informed scepticism.
