Introduction to The Relational Approach and its Critics: A Conference with Dr. Jon Mills

Abstract

In February 2015 a symposium was held at Bar-Ilan University titled The Relational Approach and Its Critics: A Conference With Dr. Jon Mills, sponsored by the Israeli forum of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the Department of Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University. The distinguished keynote speaker was Jon Mills, the Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist who has become the most important and profound spokesman to critique the relational psychoanalytic movement. We asked two relational psychologists, together with an independent school psychologist, a Kleinian psychoanalyst, and a researcher of hermeneutics and culture, to respond to Mills’s address, each from his or her unique vantage point. This symposium created a chance for a scholarly, comprehensive evaluation of current relational thought that ranged from the clinical to the philosophical, emphasizing anew the vitality of interdisciplinary dialogue.