I believe that relational psychoanalysis creates unique risks for the analytic or therapeutic process, just as a classical, Kleinian or Kohutian analysis create different sets of risks; such risks may be expressed through a generalized countertransference pattern, which each theoretical viewpoint may encourage and legitimize, relating to patients in general rather than to the unique personality of an individual patient. These patterns may relate to the analyst’s initial fantasies about analytic work, which may have played a role both in choosing our profession and in feeling attracted to a particular theoretical model.
Among the specific risks of a relational approach (some of which are expressed or implied in my three case examples) are the danger that an emphasis on intersubjectivity and interaction may be premature for a particular highly defended or regressed patient, and may be experienced as intrusive and as narcissistically motivated; the danger that an image of analyst and analysand as mutually involved adults may block or cloud more regressive needs of the patient, whereas the egalitarian relational ideal may deprive a patient of experiencing the analyst as a strong dependable authority; and the dangers that the analyst’s personal involvement and openness may be experienced as flooding or as seductive, self-disclosure may be felt to be exhibitionistic or as requiring of the patient to be the analyst’s therapist, and the analyst’s willingness to acknowledge and explore errors may be seen as a sign of weakness, as a way to rationalize empathic failures, or as a subtle method of avoiding the patient’s anger. (Chapter 3: Relational psychoanalysis and its discontents, Emanuel Berman)
De-Idealizing Relational Theory: A Critique From Within (Relational Perspectives Book Series) (p. 78). Taylor and Francis. Kindle edition.
