Reply to Mitchell
(2001)
Every new theoretical development in psychoanalysis tends to lead to counter trends or calls for a return to a more pure version of analysis. Some critics of psychoanalysis' relational turn view this theorizing as excessively interpersonal, using the most literal definition of this latter perspective – psychoanalysis as simply an I – Thou relationship between two conscious people. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, for example, starts with the assumption that unconscious minds can be studied independently from those persons engaged in the study. It then follows for such critics that, in interpersonal/relational analytic action, the person of the analyst has become too central and intrusive in the process, obscuring the examination of patients' unconscious mind.