ABSTRACT

The recent interface between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, which were traditionally held at arm’s length by the analytic community, has led to a sea change in psychoanalytic theory and technique. These trends have primarily occurred in North America under the rubric of so-called relational psychoanalysis, an amalgam of disparate and even contradictory perspectives including hermeneutics, constructivism, deconstructionism, and intersubjectivity. Largely a creature of the American psychoanalytic community, virtually all of these postmodern theories filtered into North American culture from Europeans, including the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who first identified the linguistic element of psychoanalysis with structuralism, and French poststructuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Michel Foucault. American analysts who are identified with the relational perspective have tended to eschew the more theoretical preoccupations of the French school and focus instead on a relaxation of classical psychoanalytic technique (e.g. neutrality and abstinence) emphasizing the so-called real and personal aspects of the analyst-patient relationship.