Fall Winter 2005

There is far greater theoretical coherence and clinical value in the concepts of the personal (person-to-person) and the new relationship than in the earlier concept of the “real” relationship. To develop this thesis, the author traces the historical evolution of the concept of the “real” relationship, elucidates its meaning(s), and considers its problematic features in the light of a relational psychoanalytic perspective. Although the concept of the real relationship was originally derived from the objectivist assumptions of the classical psychoanalytic model, it has thrived with relational (intersubjective) theoretical advances. Ironically, its role has become elevated in theory and practice even as its meaning has been confounded, rather than clarified, by these advances. Conceptualizations of the personal and new relationships are proposed which far more effectively articulate the goals and methods of relational psychoanalysis. Introduction: The Problem Recognition of the mutative significance of the analytic relationship within, as well as above and beyond its role in transference analysis, is perhaps the most striking theoretical reversal in the history of psychoanalysis.1 A com15 Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 3(1):15–56 Psychoanalytic Perspectives/189291 Kenneth A. Frank is a cofounder, Director, and Trustee of N.I.P. T.I. and a Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. The author wishes to thank Margaret J. Black and Paul L. Wachtel, as well as Amanda Hirsch Geffner and Sheldon Itzkowitz, Psychoanalytic Perspectives Coeditors, for their thoughtful reactions to an earlier draft of this paper. 1 I use the word “reversal” advisedly. Friedman (2005), citing recent doubts about the transference neurosis and reconstruction, described the growing emphasis on “actuality” in social constructivism and intersubjectivism. Fall Winter 2005 12/8/05 10:39 AM Page 15