ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 situates the sections of the book in terms of the relational turn in psychoanalytic theory. I introduce and trace the rise of relational psychoanalytic theory and the development of object relations theory from the primacy of drives to the primacy of relationships. I position relational psychoanalytic thought at the convergence of post-Cartesian philosophical understandings and an ecological sensibility orienting our understanding of human nature and the sciences of life. This chapter makes the argument for relational psychoanalytic theory as at the cusp of paradigmatic changes in how we can productively understand our paradoxically singular-plural condition in being.
