A note on two common assumptions about interpersonal psychoanalysis - Commentary on Jeanne Wolff Bernstein's "Countertransference: Our new royal roadto the unconscious?"

Every new theoretical development in psychoanalysis tends to lead to counte r trends or calls for a return to a more pure version of analysis. Some cri tics of psychoanalysis' relational turn view this theorizing as excessively interpersonal, using the most literal definition of this latter perspectiv e-psychoanalysis as simply an I-Thou relationship between two conscious peo ple. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, for example, starts with the assumption that u nconscious minds can be studied independently from those persons engaged in the study. It then follows for such critics that, in interpersonal/relatio nal analytic action, the person of the analyst has become too central and i ntrusive in the process, obscuring the examination of patients' unconscious mind.