Advanced Relational Psychoanalysis

Newport Psychoanalytic Institute

12/5/25-2/21/2026

This seminar critically examines the theoretical fault lines, clinical impasses, and philosophical tensions within contemporary relational psychoanalysis. Students will engage with current debates regarding the ontological status of the unconscious in relational theory, examining critiques of Mitchell's "death of the drive" and contemporary attempts to rehabilitate Freudian metapsychology within relational frameworks. The course interrogates the tension between postmodern constructivism and clinical realism in relational thought, exploring how theorists like Hoffman, Renik, and Stern navigate questions of therapeutic action and psychic reality.

Emphasis will be placed on recognizing and utilizing analyst dissociation as clinical data rather than technical failure, while exploring how social location, cultural difference, and power asymmetries complicate relational assumptions about mutuality and recognition through engagement with feminist, critical race, and postcolonial critiques.