Stephen A. Mitchell - Relational concepts in psychoanalysis (1988)

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If the deepest, most fundamental levels of the analysand's pathology are to be reached, the relationship with the analyst becomes the vehicle for the establishment and articulation of bad-object relations. The analyst cannot enter the analysand's world in any form other than as a familiar (that is, "bad," or less than gratifying, object). This is true even though there often are elaborate resistances to the experience of the transference. Otherwise the analysis does not touch the analysand deeply, offers no promise, no hope for connection and transformation.

Stephen A. Mitchell

One of the most profound and universal realizations of later childhood, a realization that probably is never totally integrated, is the discovery that one's parents are not necessarily representative of the human species, that one has grown up in an idiosyncratically structured family with its own peculiarities and dramas.

Stephen A. Mitchell

In the integrated relational model presented here, sexuality and relational issues are not seen as alternative foci. Rather, sexuality is regarded as a central realm in which relational conflicts are shaped and played out.

Stephen A. Mitchell