Integration And Development: A Relationship Between Psychoanalytic Research

Relational psychoanalysis is a new orienation of psychoanalytic psychology movement. it started at the twentieth century 80s.grew fast in the next few decades, and it gradually became the primary force of modern psychoanalysis. The thoughts of rellational psychoanalysis originated from object relations, interpersonal psychoanalysis and self psychology these three schools. It was also influened by the postmodern philosophic thoughts.The originator of relational psychoanalysis Stephen Mitchell believed that, there was a relational orientation lie in the psychoanalytic thheories for a long time, this relational orientation became more and more obvious in the process of the development of psychoanalytic theories.Thus appeared paradigm shift inside the psychoanalysis, and the relational models replaced the drive models to become the dominant theoretical model. The basic concepts and goals of relational psychoanalysis were that: Using the relational thoughts shared by the main psychoanalytic schools as links to integrate a new psychoanalytic tradition which dominated by relational concepts.Relational psychoanalysis includes three kinds of main theoretical patterns, they are integrative metatheory, social constructivist theory and intersubjectivity theory. The three theoretical patterns are the shared disciplinary norms recognized and followed by relational psychoanalysts. The integrative metatheory is the fundamental frame of relational psychoanalytic theories, and it is a kind of parallel relation between social constructivist theory and intersubjectivity theory, using relations as core assumption, they make new interpretations of human daily life, individual psychological development, psychoanalytic process in different angles.Although the theoretical emphasis of relational psychoanalysts are not the same, but they keep consistent with the basic assumptions. They have a lot of shared basic viewpoints and core concepts. The discovery and achievement of relational psychoanalysis in theoretical construction and psychotherapeutic practice are comprehensive. In the specific theory, it has some development in psychological development theories, unconscious theories, the view of self, the theories of gender and sexuality. In the field of psychopathology, its major exploration lies in psychosomatic disorders, dissociative identity disorder, sadism and masochism. In the view of treatment, it focuses on the diverse sides of clinical psychoanalysis, they are influence and antonomy, ritual and spontaneity, subjectivity and objectivity.Generally speaking, relational psychoanalysis has four theoretical traits, they are relationality,integrity, post-modernity, interdisciplinarity. Relational psychoanalysis makes significant contributions to the psychoanalysis both in theory and practice. It innovates in the paradigm,makes multi-development in the theoretical construction, increases the cohesive force inside the psychoanalysis, but it also has its limitations. Relational psychoanalysts have corrected the division inside the psychoanalysis effectively, it furtherly enrichs psychoanalytic thoughts,dominates the development tendency of psychoanalysis, strengthen the vitality of psychoanalysis.Looking into the future, relational psychoanalysis will makes progress along the existing road of pluralism continually.