Seligman - Relationships in development : infancy, intersubjectivity, and attachment

Relationships in Development

The recent explosion of new research about infants, parental care, and infantparent relationships has shown conclusively that human relationships are central motivators and organizers in development. Relationships in Development examines the practical implications for dynamic psychotherapy with both adults and children, especially following trauma. Stephen Seligman offers engaging examples of infantparent interactions as well as of psychotherapeutic process. He traces the place of childhood and child development in psychoanalysis from Freud onward, showing how different images about babies evolved and influenced analytic theory and practice.

Relationships in Development offers a new integration of ideas that updates established psychoanalytic models in a new context: Relational-developmental psychoanalysis. Seligman integrates four crucial domains:

Infancy Research, including attachment theory and research

Developmental Psychoanalysis

Relational/intersubjective Psychoanalysis

Classical Freudian, Kleinian, and Object Relations theories (including Winnicott).

An array of specific sources are included: developmental neuroscience, attachment theory and research, studies of emotion, trauma and infantparent interaction, and nonlinear dynamic systems theories. Although new psychoanalytic approaches are featured, the classical theories are not neglected, including the Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian, and Ego Psychology orientations. Seligman links current knowledge about early experiences and how they shape later development with the traditional psychoanalytic attention to the irrational, unconscious, turbulent, and unknowable aspects of the mind and human interaction. These different fields are taken together to offer an open and flexible approach to psychodynamic therapy with a variety of patients in different socioeconomic and cultural situations.

Relationships in Development will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and graduate students in psychology, social work, and psychotherapy. The fundamental issues and implications presented will also be of great importance to the wider psychodynamic and psychotherapeutic communities.

Stephen Seligman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco; Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and Clinical Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. He is also co-editor of the American Psychiatric Press Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice .

Relational Perspectives Book Series

Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris

Series Co-Editors

Steven Kuchuck & Eyal Rozmarin

Associate Editors

The Relational Perspectives Book Series (RPBS) publishes books that grow out of or contribute to the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. The term relational psychoanalysis was first used by Greenberg and Mitchell to bridge the traditions of interpersonal relations, as developed within interpersonal psychoanalysis and object relations, as developed within contemporary British theory. But, under the seminal work of the late Stephen A. Mitchell, the term relational psychoanalysis grew and began to accrue to itself many other influences and developments. Various tributariesinterpersonal psychoanalysis, object relations theory, Self Psychology, empirical infancy research, and elements of contemporary Freudian and Kleinian thoughtflow into this tradition, which understands relational configurations between self and others, both real and fantasied, as the primary subject of psychoanalytic investigation.

We refer to the relational tradition, rather than to a relational school, to highlight that we are identifying a trend, a tendency within contemporary psychoanalysis, not a more formally organized or coherent school or system of beliefs. Our use of the term relational signifies a dimension of theory and practice that has become salient across the wide spectrum of contemporary psychoanalysis. Now under the editorial supervision of Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris, with the assistance of Associate Editors Steven Kuchuck and Eyal Rozmarin, the Relational Perspectives Book Series originated in 1990under the editorial eye of the late Stephen A. Mitchell. Mitchell was the most prolific and influential of the originators of the relational tradition. Committed to dialogue among psychoanalysts, he abhorred the authoritarianism that dictated adherence to a rigid set of beliefs or technical restrictions. He championed open discussion, comparative and integrative approaches, and promoted new voices across the generations.

Included in the Relational Perspectives Book Series are authors and works that come from within the relational tradition, extend and develop that tradition, as well as works that critique relational approaches or compare and contrast it with alternative points of view. The series includes our most distinguished senior psychoanalysts, along with younger contributors who bring fresh vision. A full list of titles in this series is available at https://www.routledge.com/mentalhealth/series/LEARPBS.

Note

Greenberg, J. & Mitchell, S. (1983). Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Relationships in Development

Infancy, Intersubjectivity, and Attachment

Stephen Seligman

First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Stephen Seligman

The right of Stephen Seligman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 7 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-0-415-88001-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-88002-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-85082-4 (ebk)

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To Mary

Contents

This book would not have been written without Adrienne Harris, the co-editor of the Relational Perspectives Book Series. Along with convincing me that this was worth it and reading several drafts, she lent me her extraordinary frame of reference and keen understanding of all the nuanced complexities involved in synthesizing psychoanalysis with adjacent fields. Im grateful for her steady encouragement and ongoing insight.