ABSTRACT
To position the relational perspective among the various points of view contained in this book, it is not accurate to specify as its foundational premises that anxiety is a consequence of a relationship, that anxiety requires a relationship to make it manifest in the infant, or that relationships create the characterological anxiety level of the developing child. To build a contemporary relational perspective on anxiety we have to assemble a specific set of arguments offered by various authors over the last 50 years. No single psychoanalyst's theory has been as foundational within the relational paradigm as Freud's work has been within the American ego psychology paradigm. Moreover, it is not possible, in assembling the building blocks of a contemporary relational psychoanalytic paradigm, simply to incorporate the entire edifice of any major theorist's writings. Fairbairn and Winnicott, for example, are the prototypical object relational analysts, and the British object relational perspective has contributed substantially to the emerging American relational paradigm. Nonetheless, in this chapter I extract and integrate relational elements of their work while leaving behind the remnants of Freud's drive theory that remained embedded. Similarly, when drawing on the writings of Bion, I ignore some of the more classical Kleinian elements in his theory. Coming from the other direction, I do not work as hard as, say, Mitchell (1988) does to bring all the work of Sullivan into the new American relational paradigm, because not all of Sullivan fits. Fairbairn, Sullivan, Winnicott, and Bion (among others) were transitional figures in the still ongoing shift in this country from American ego psychological to American relational psychoanalysis.
