Opening Our Tent Flaps to Broaden the Reach of Psychoanalysis? Some Musings on Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Integration: An Evolving Synergy, Edited by Jill Bresler and Karen Starr

Abstract

W hile reading Bresler and Starr’s (2015) edited book about integrating into relational psychoanalysis various methodologies from the cognitive, behavioral, and bodily based psychotherapies, I could almost imagine the book’s 19 authors as “boots on the ground,” fighting on behalf of Orange’s (2015) plea for opening the tent flaps of psychoanalysis. In Chapter 2 of this book, Safran and Messer propose an ideal stance for psychology practitioners, a stance they call “engaged fallibilistic pluralism” (p. 29) to which they add contextualism as well. They recommend this stance, which is paradoxically both skeptical and embracing as part of their postmodern critique of psychotherapy integration. But