ABSTRACT
It has been a great privilege to serve as editor of this ground-breaking issue comprising a series of relational discussions on Holly Levenkron's compelling case of Ali, in which Levenkron illustrates a relational ap proach to therapeutic action. I believe this issue offers a unique contribu tion to our understanding of a relational sensibility. The contributors, all outstanding clinicians in their own right, present alternative views on some of the central organizing concepts inherent in this perspective, including, in no particular order, enactment, confrontation, self-revelation, meaning construction, conflict, negotiation, dissociation, intersubjectivity, recogni tion, authentic engagement, empathy, and Levenkron's own contribution to relational thought, affective honesty. The issue as a whole thus provides a compendium on relational understanding, complete with an embodiment of the tensions that exist among relationalists as they considered and ad dressed the same clinical material. As readers, we were able to view the va riety of conflicting meanings, assumptions, and consequences of this still-emerging psychoanalytic frame.
