This book builds on two current developments in psychology scholarship and practice. The first centers on broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Critique of individualism spring not only from psychologists working in the academy, but also from communities of therapy and counseling. The second, and related development from which this work builds, is the search for alternatives to individualist understanding. Thus, therapists such as Steve Mitchell, along with feminists at the Stone Center, expand the psychoanalytic tradition to include a relational orientation to therapy. The present volume will give voice to the critique of individualism, but its major thrust is to develop and illustrate a far more radical and potentially exciting landscape of relational thought and practice that now exists. Most existing attempts to build a relational foundation remain committed to a residual form of individualist psychology. The present work carves out a space of understanding in which relational process stands prior to the very concept of the individual. More broadly, the book attempts to develop a thoroughgoing relational account of human activity. In doing so, Gergen reconstitutes 'the mind' as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in a range of everyday professional practices, including family therapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational psychology.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Toward a New Enlightenment; Part I. From Bounded to Relational Being; 1. Bounded Being; 2. In the Beginning is the Relationship; 3. The Relational Self; 4. The Body as Relationship: Emotion, Pleasure and Pain; Part II. Relational Being in Everyday Life; 5. Multi-being and the Adventure of Everyday Life; 6. Bonds, Barricades, and Beyond; Part III. Relational Being in Practice; 7. Knowledge as Co-Creation; 8. Education in a Relational Key; 9. Therapy as Relational Recovery; 10. Organizing: The Precarious Balance; Part IV. From the Moral to the Sacred; 11. Beyond Moral Pluralism; 12. All Our Relations, Approaching the Sacred; Epilogue: The Coming of Relational Consciousness; Index

Reviews

Winner of the Media Ecology Association's 2010 Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction!
Winner of the 2009 PROSE award in Psychology!
More than 40 PROSE Awards, including the top prize, the R.R. Hawkins Award, were presented on February 4, 2010, at a special Awards Luncheon during the PSP Annual Conference at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. A complete list of all winners can be found on the PROSE Awards website at:
http: //www.proseawards.com/docs/2009-PROSE-Winners-Press-Release.doc.
Presented since 1976, the 2009 PROSE Awards received a record-breaking 441 entries--more than ever before in its 34-year history-- from more than 60 professional and scholarly publishers across the country.
"A marvelously likeable book, Relational Being faces us with an urgent and profound challenge. Jettisoning individualism entirely, Gergen demonstrates the sense and virtue of understanding all aspects of humanb