ABSTRACT
Relational psychoanalysis synthesizes the developmental perspective with the interactionist-interpersonalist influence that was essential in its inception. The relational analysis provides an acute integration of analytic theory and technique with contemporary developmental psychoanalysis and developmental psychology overall, rooted as it is in the view that people are essentially oriented to human relationships, throughout the life span. In addition to proposing and applying an array of brilliant psychoanalytic ideas, Stephen Mitchell was acutely aware of the role of such ideas in shaping analysts' thinking, in both our intellectual discourse and clinical work. Mitchell described how each theory generates its own 'metaphor of the baby' that organizes theorizing and clinical data. Applied to analytic clinical work, the image of the infant and parent as a dyadic mutual influence system supports the emerging relational-intersubjectivist conception of analysis as a fundamentally two-person process. The deemphasis on the Oedipus complex correlates with the relational reconceptualization of the analyst's authority.
