Relational Being first builds on the broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Speaking to scholars and social practitioners, the work sets out to develop and illustrate a far more radical and potentially exciting landscape of relational thought and practice. It 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. As Gergen proposes, all meaning grows from coordinated action, or coaction, and thus, all that we hold to be real, rational, and valuable depends on the well-being of our relationships. Gergen reconstitutes "the mind" as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in everyday life and professional practices, including psychotherapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational development. He questions the idea of mental illness, and focuses on therapy as a means of fostering relational recovery. Gergen also explores the ways in which what we call "knowledge" issues from communities, rather than from individual minds. The volume concludes with an innovative exploration of moral action and spirituality.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Toward a New Enlightenment ; Part I: From Bounded to Relational Being ; Chapter 1 - Bounded Being ; Self as Abuse ; Fundamental Isolation ; Unrelenting Evaluation ; The Search for Self-Esteem ; Self and Other ; Distrust and Derogation ; Relationships as Artifi ce ; The Culture of Bounded Being ; The Costs of Calculation ; Public Morality as Nuisance ; Transforming Tradition ; Chapter 2 - In the Beginning Is the Relationship ; Co-Action and Creation ; The Co-Creation of Everything ; Co-Action and Constraint ; Multiplicity and Malleability ; Relational Flow: Failing and Flourishing ; From Causality to Confl uence ; Chapter 3 - The Relational Self ; Being Unbound ; The Very Idea of Self-Knowledge ; Call in the Experts ; From Mind to Relationship ; Mind as Action in Relationship ; Reason as Relationship ; Agency: Intention as Action ; Experience and Memory: Not Mine but Ours ; Creativity as Relational Achievement ; Chapter 4 - The Body as Relationship: Emotion, Pleasure, and Pain ; The Emotions in History and Culture ; The Dance of the Emotions ; Relational Scenarios ; Disrupting Dangerous Dances ; Aren't the Emotions Biological? ; Bodily Pleasure: The Gift of Co-Action ; Pain: The Final Challenge ; Part II: Relational Being in Everyday Life ; Chapter 5 - Multi-Being and the Adventures of Everyday Life ; Multi-Being ; Early Precursors: Depth Psychology ; Contemporary Precursors: Living with Others ; Critique and Coherence ; Picturing Multi-Being ; Coordination: The Challenge of Flight ; Meeting and Mutuality ; Sustenance and Suppression ; Everyday Perils: Relations Among Relations ; Counter-Logics and Relational Deterioration ; The Arts of Coordination ; Understanding: Synchrony in Action ; Affirmation: The Birth and Restoration of Collaboration ; Appreciative Exploration ; Chapter 6 - Bonds, Barricades, and Beyond ; The Thrust Toward Bonding ; Cementing Bonds ; Negotiating the Real and the Good ; Narrative: From Self to Relationship ; The Enchanting of "We" ; Bonding and Boundaries ; Relational Severing ; Erosion of the Interior: United We Fall ; The Tyranny of Truth ; From Erosion to Annihilation ; Beyond the Barricades ; Hot Confl ict and Transformative Dialogue ; The Public Conversations Project ; Narrative Mediation ; Restorative Justice ; Part III Relational Being in Professional Practice ; Chapter 7 - Knowledge as Co-Creation ; Knowledge as Communal Construction ; Disturbing Disciplines ; Pervasive Antagonism ; Discipline and Debilitation ; The Elegant Suffi ciency of Ignorance ; Knowledge: For Whose Benefit? ; Toward Transcending Disciplines ; Interweaving Disciplines ; The Emerging Hybrids ; The Return of the Public Intellectual ; Writing as Relationship ; Writing in the Service of Relationship ; Writing as a Full Self ; Scholarship as Performance ; Research as Relationship ; Relational Alternatives in Human Research ; Narrative Inquiry: Entry into Otherness ; Action Research: Knowing With ; Chapter 8 - Education in a Relational Key ; Aims of Education Revisited ; Circles of Participation ; Relational Pedagogy in Action ; Circle 1: Teacher and Student ; Circle 2: Relations Among Students ; Collaborative Classrooms ; Collaborative Writing ; Circle 3: Classroom and Community ; Community Collaboration ; Cooperative Education ; Service Learning ; Circle 4: The Classroom and the World ; Circles Unceasing ; Chapter 9 - Therapy as Relational Recovery ; Therapy in Relational Context ; The Social Genesis of <"the Problem>" ; The Origins of Therapeutic Solutions ; Relational Consequences of Therapy ; A Contemporary Case: Mind and Meds ; Therapy: The Power of Coordinated Action ; Rejection and Affi rmation ; Suspending Realities ; Realities Replaced ; Expanding the Therapeutic Repertoire ; From Fixed Reality to Relational Flow ; Beyond Language: The Challenge of Effective Action ; Chapter 10 - Organizing: The Precarious Balance ; Organizing: Life Through Affi rmation ; Beware the Organization ; Suppression of Voices ; The Organization Against Itself ; Separation from Cultural Context ; Decision-Making as Relational Coordination ; Polyphonic Process: Lifting Every Voice ; Decision-Making Through Appreciative Inquiry ; From Leadership to Relational Leading ; From Evaluation to Valuation ; The Organization-in-the-World ; Part IV From the Moral to the Sacred ; Chapter 11- Morality: From Relativism to Relational Responsibility ; The Challenge of Moral Conduct ; Immorality Is Not the Problem ; Moralities Are the Problem ; Toward Second-Order Morality ; Relational Responsibility in Action ; From Co-Existence to Community ; Beyond the Beginning ; Chapter 12 - Approaching the Sacred ; Metaphors of the Relational ; The Procreative Act ; Systems Theory ; Actor Networks ; Distributed Cognition ; Biological Interdependence ; Process Philosophy ; The Buddha Dharma: Inter-Being ; The Sacred Potential of Relational Being ; Toward Sacred Practice ; Epilogue: The Coming of Relational Consciousness