Argues that relations are real and generate real relational 'goods' and 'evils', affecting those involved and other people.

This book addresses the necessity, and the process of the development of human relation and the dynamic forces affecting the Relational Transactions and the Human Relation as a whole. It reviews development of the human personality and Personality Disorders. This writing evaluates the role and the impact of Personality Disorders on sick human relations.

This book explores the ways in which social relations are profoundly changing modern society, arguing that, constituting a reality of their own, social relations will ultimately lead to a new form of society: an aftermodern or relational society. Drawing on the thought of Simmel, it extends the idea that society consists essentially of social relations, in order to make sense of the operation of dichotomous forces in society and to examine the emergence of a "third" in the morphogenetic processes. Through a realist and critical relational sociology, which allows for the fact that human beings are both internal and external to social relations, and therefore to society, the author shows how we are moving towards a new, trans-modern society – one that calls into question the guiding ideas of Western modernity, such as the notion of linear progression, that science and technology are the decisive factors of human development, and that culture can entirely supplant nature. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, economists, political scientists, and social philosophers with interests in relational thought, critical realism, and social transformation.

Traditional psychoanalysis views relationships as forged through individual drives--a satisfaction and fulfillment of needs and desires. Rucker and Lombardi contend, however, that all relationships cannot be explained so simply; rather, they argue that human relationships carry meanings which cannot be reduced solely to the psychic contributions of each of the individuals involved. Instead, Subject Relations discusses the existence of a related unconscious rooted in mutual subjective experience. The authors cite numerous clinical examples that show how the unconscious material generated by human interrelatedness comes to light. Drawing on the work of Matte-Blanco as well as traditional object relations theorists such as Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, and Thomas Ogden, the authors examine how identifications that exist through unconscious processes manifest themselves in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Critical realism is a philosophy of science that positions itself against the major alternative philosophies underlying contemporary sociology. This book offers a general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective. It also acts as an introduction to critical realism for students and scholars of sociology. Written in a lively, accessible style, Douglas V. Porpora argues that sociology currently operates with deficient accounts of truth, culture, structure, agency, and causality that are all better served by a critical realist perspective. This approach argues against the alternative sociological perspectives, in particular the dominant positivism which privileges statistical techniques and experimental design over ethnographic and historical approaches. However, the book also compares critical realism favourably with a range of other approaches, including poststructuralism, pragmatism, interpretivism, practice theory, and relational sociology. Numerous sociological examples are included, and each chapter addresses well-known and current work in sociology.

‘Simultaneous invention’ has become commonplace in the natural sciences, but is still virtually unknown within the sphere of social science. The convergence of two highly compatible versions of Critical Realism from two independent sources is a striking exception. Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Sociology develops ‘upwards’ from sociology into a Realist meta-theory, unlike Roy Baskhar’s philosophy of science that works ‘downwards’ and ‘underlabours’ for the social sciences. This book systematically introduces Donati’s Relational Sociology to an English readership for the first time since he began to advance his approach thirty years ago. In this eagerly awaited book, Pierpaolo Donati shifts the focus of sociological theory onto the relational order at all levels. He argues that society is constituted by the relations people create with one another, their emergent properties and powers, and internal and external causal effects. Relational Sociology provides a distinctive variant upon the Realist theoretical conspectus, especially because of its ability to account for social integration. It will stimulate debate amongst realists themselves and, of course, with the adversaries of realism. It is a valuable new resource for students of social theory and practising social theorists.

In Selving: A Relational Theory of Self Organization, Irene Fast invokes the basic distinction between the self as "me" and the self as "I" in order to develop a contemporary theory of the self as subject. In a return to Freud's clinical finding that all psychological processes are personally motivated, she elaborates a notion of the "I-self" that is intrinsically dynamic and relational. Within this conception, our perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting are not what our self does; rather, they are what our self is. According to Fast, the basic unit of the dynamic I-self --of selving --is a scheme of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. This notion, which comprehends development (and developmental failure) as a product of integration and differentiation among discrete I-schemes, provides a radically new framework for understanding those dynamic phenomena that Freud included within his structural model of the mind and that contemporary theorists have addressed within object relational perspectives. Via the notion of selving, Fast likewise brings fresh insight to a host of issues that have engaged psychoanalysts and developmental psychologists in recent years. These topics include the place of bodily experience in a relational model of mind, the organization of self as simultaneously individual and relational, the formulation of a constructivist model of psychic structure, among others. Selving is not only a lucid demonstration of how a relational theory of self can reorder clinical observations in conceptually and therapeutically illuminating ways. It is also a convincing demonstration of how a constructivist model emphasizing the interactive nature of meaning-making provides bridges to Piagetian theory, developmental research, and observational infancy studies.