Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell were considered two of the most important architects of the referential revolution in the United States. Greenberg and Mitchell's groundbreaking book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983), is an important milestone in the history of the referential approach. The book was a great success and became a classic that marked the beginning of the referential revolution.

Mitchell founded the movement and remained largely committed to the ideas of interpersonal psychoanalysis, believing that a theory that incorporated the ideas of relational theorists could replace Freud's biological drive concept. In contrast, Greenberg took his own independent path. He sought to intertwine the relational approach with the wisdom of traditional psychoanalytic thought. He feared that the relational approach was becoming an oppressive establishment that followed the very methods it criticized. The relationalists attempted, he wrote, "to develop a unified psychoanalytic methodology that they attempted to apply to all analysts, all patients, and all dyads."

Since his separation from Mitchell, Greenberg has established himself as the most significant expert on comparative psychoanalysis. He has become an enlightening and sophisticated commentator on field theory, Kleinian theory, Bion theory, trauma, expression in action, and many other concepts. Greenberg is the most enthusiastic advocate of the open discourse that, in his opinion, alone will give psychoanalysis vitality and creativity.

Greenberg can, then, be seen as representing the "American independent way," similar to Winnicott's independent group that refused to choose between Melanie Clyde and Anna Freud.

In this conversation, Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will talk with Jay Greenberg about his different approach to an approach that tried to be different:

Why did he leave the revolution at its beginning?

How is his approach different and similar to the relational approach?

What were the points of disagreement between him and Stephen Mitchell?

What changes the analytic encounter, and how can "good old" classic components be combined with more contemporary components in therapeutic work?

What place should expression in action, enactment, and interpretation occupy in the therapeutic process?

Jay Greenberg is a faculty member and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City. He is the co-author with Stephen Mitchell of Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, and Oedipus and Beyond: A Clinical Theory. Greenberg is the author of more than 80 articles on issues of psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, and the history of psychoanalysis.

Greenberg served as editor of Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 2011 to 2020. Prior to that, he was North American editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2007-2010) and editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (1994-2001). In both his editorial work and his own writing, he has adopted a comparative psychoanalytic approach, from his 1983 book with Mitchell to comparisons between different approaches in different parts of the world.