Definition of "relational" []

• Of or arising from kinship. (adjective)
• Indicating or constituting relation. (adjective)
• Grammar Of, relating to, or being a word or particle, such as a conjunction or preposition, that expresses a syntactic relation between elements in a phrase or sentence. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In his effort to synthesize and integrate diverse object relations theories and differentiate them from classical Freudian theory, Mitchell uses the term relational matrix to refer to the self, the object, and transactional patterns."
• "We need to be able to bring our feelings of anxiety and existential vulnerability into dialogue with our fellow sufferers, so that these painful feelings can be held and better borne within relationships -- what I call a relational home -- rather than being evaded by means of the grandiose, destructive resurrective ideologies that have been so characteristic of human history."
• "Teller (1989) has introduced the related idea of what he calls relational holism."