Relational psychoanalysis is a school of psychoanalysis in the United States that emphasizes the role of real and imagined relationships with others in mental disorder and psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods which attempt to elucidate unconscious relations in a systematic way through an associative process. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... Psychotherapy is a set of techniques intended to cure or improve psychological and behavioral problems in humans. ...

Relational psychoanalysis began in the 1980's as an attempt to integrate interpersonal psychoanalysis's emphasis on the detailed exploration of interpersonal interactions with British object relations theory's sophisticated ideas about the psychological importance of internalized relationships with other people. Relationalists argue that personality emerges out of the matrix of early formative relationships with parents and other figures. Freud invented the concept object relation to describe, or rather to put emphasis on the fact, that bodily drives satisfy their need through a medium, an object, on a specific locus. ... In psychology, personality is a collection of emotion, thought, and behavior patterns unique to a person. ...

When treating patients, relational psychoanalysts stress being authentic and spontaneous. Most disagree with the traditional Freudian emphasis on interpretation and free association, instead emphazing the importance of creating a lively, genuine relationship with the patient. Relational analysts feel that psychotherapy works best when the therapist focuses on establishing a healing relationship with the patient, rather than focusing on facilitating insight. Sigmund Freud His famous couch Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. ... The term Free association has two meanings: Free association - a clinical technique in psychology devised by Sigmund Freud Free association - a political relationship that a country may have with another country This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Psychotherapy is a set of techniques intended to cure or improve psychological and behavioral problems in humans. ...

The best-known relational psychoanalytic authors are Stephen A. Mitchell and Jay R. Greenberg, whose book Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory is considered to be the first major work of relational psychoanalysis.

Other important relational authors include Lewis Aron, Jody Davies, Stuart Pizer, Karen Maroda, Emmanuel Ghent, Robert Stolorow, and Jessica Benjamin.