ABSTRACT
The various relational psychologies address the problem of the limitations of an overly intrapsychic approach. This chapter suggests that those relational psychologies that acknowledge the basic healthy social needs of the infant have contributed explanations that help to make greater sense of them. Jessica Benjamin gives an excellent critique of the limitations of psychoanalysis in so far as it deals only, or too one-sidedly, with the internal world of fantasy and not with relationships to the outer world. Psychotherapy is a complex version of the process; it is not making clever and apt interpretations; by and large it is a long-term giving the patient back what the patient brings. Benjamin, writing from a relational psychology perspective, revisits S. Freud’s ideas on sadism and masochism. The chapter shows that a loss of the state of bliss, can cause a reaction in the psyche that can have an almost psychotic nature, certainly a borderline quality to it.
