History of relational approaches to psychotherapy

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The relational approaches to psychotherapy are often dated as starting in the early 1980s, with the seminal work of Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory published in 1983.​ The history of key people in the relational "movement" after that, and the special place of the relational track of the  New York (University) Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, founded in 1988, and the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues, launched in 1991,are reasonably well known. I want to mention here a number of names from the earlier history of the idea of "relational".

One important distinction to make is that a large part of the relational movement is not only relational but also psychoanalytically inspired. Relational psychoanalytic psychotherapists have a perhaps understandable tendency to conflate "relational" with "relational psychoanalytic". This is not descriptive of reality, I think. There are major numbers of psychotherapists outside the psychoanalytic tradition who work and theorise relationally; they deserve as much attention as relational psychoanalysts. Because of the relative lack of importance in thinking about them, even in this blog I probably underrepresent them, to my personal regret.

Pre-history

I think many people would agree that there is a pre-history of "relational"​ in the pre-WW II area. At the minimum this would include Ferenczi. I would also like to include CG Jung, Martin Buber, and Otto Rank. Michael Balint and Harry Stack Sullivan could be included here because of their date of birth in the 19th century, although their influence really only started with works published after WW II.

The first wave

The most interesting list I want to suggest is of the generation of psychotherapists who published between 1945 and 1980 and heavily influenced relational ways of working, without always being given that predicate. They can be called the "first wave" of relational, with the "second wave" the one normally counted in relational history, as hinted at above.​ 

Who are the main therapists of the relational first wave? I suggest:​

  • Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)
  • Clara Thompson (1893-1958)​
  • Michael Balint (1896-​1970)
  • DW Winnicott (1896-1971)
  • Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
  • Kohut (​1913-1981)

Comments and implications

Some people (e.g. Steven Stern) would like to include Bion in this list too. I am not as convinced of this as he is, but not very certain.​ I would more think about Karen Horney, Harold Searles, and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann.

You may gather from the above that I consider that the historical influence on general psychotherapeutic practice of the Budapest school and of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis continues to be underestimated and ignored. The same may be said, to a lesser extent, of Self Psychology.​

I would be very interested in opinions and comments of my readers, to see if they agree with this construction of the history of 'relational', and whether they believe there are people of comparable importance in the early period that I overlooked.​