The Return to the Consulting Room

psychoanalytic theories compared

Abstract

In what follows, I want to take a look at relational psychoanalysis in the US and contemporary Kleinian thinking in the UK. The one gained traction in the 1980s and can lay claim to being the theory of choice among young analysts and psychoanalytic candidates. The other has a long pedigree stretching back to the 1930s and has been renewed generation after generation. And, though I have let the authors speak for themselves, my own preference for the contemporary Kleinians will become amply apparent.