Challenging Relational Psychoanalysis: A Critique of Postmodernism and Analyst Self-Disclosure

This paper is based on two lectures given at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, on February 13, 2015. These lectures were largely derived from my book Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Mills, 2012) and serve as the focus of critique and rebuttal from five panelists who responded to my lectures delivered at the conference. Here I provide an adumbrated critique of the adoption of postmodernism within contemporary relational theory and the excessive use of analyst self-disclosure. Although these lectures have been merged into a formal paper, they remain mostly unrevised and represent what transpired at the conference despite being cut in length for the purposes of publication.