The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 178: 483-484
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychoanalysis on the Move: The Work of Joseph Sandler
John Birtchnell, Senior Lecturer
Institute of Psychiatry, de Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF
EDITED BY SIDNEY CROWN and ALAN LEE
Edited by Peter Fonagy, Arnold M. Cooper & Robert S. Wallerstein.
London: Routledge. 1999.237 pp. £18.99 (pb). ISBN 0 415 20549 2
I did wonder why the publishers had not included this book in their
excellent series, ‘The Makers of Modern Psychotherapy’, but I
presume it is because Sandler was still alive (sadly, he died during the
preparation of the book). In fact, it has been included (as no.35) in another
series, ‘The New Library of Psychoanalysis’, the object of which
is "... to provide a forum of increasing mutual understanding between
psychoanalysts and those working in other disciplines" (p. ii). In this,
I believe it has failed. It is written by psychoanalysts for psychoanalysts,
and makes no concessions to the non-psychoanalytic reader. Few references are
made to work outside of psychoanalysis (though Segal does draw parallels with
Chomsky's view of language), and little interest is shown in establishing
connections between psychoanalysis and other disciplines. Implicit in much of
what is written is that psychoanalysis is so much a unique approach, that it
would be seriously compromised if it made concessions to alternative
approaches. I am sure this is not
true.
The book assumes the form of a festschrift. Consequently, only in the first
chapter do we get a (very necessary) overview of Joseph Sandler's major
contributions. We are told that he helped to close the gap between the
American ego psychologists and the British Kleinian and object relations
theorists. The remaining 14 chapters comprise a series of essays by eminent
psychoanalysts on issues that are linked to Sandler's preoccupations, but say
very little about him. In their review of these essays, Fonagy & Cooper
use such phrases as breathtaking, masterfully brilliant, exceptionally lucid,
wonderfully erudite and scholarly. I found them to be dense, convoluted and
packed with undefined, psychoanalytic jargon. I consider psychoanalysis to be
one of the few disciplines to take account of the true complexity of human
thinking, but I also consider the task of the theorist to be to clarify and
simplify.
We are told that Sandler aimed to divest psychoanalysis of conceptual
confusion, that he was preoccupied with the multiple and frequently
incompatible meanings attached to terms and concepts, and that his writing is
a tribute to the tolerance of ambiguity required of theoreticians such as
himself. That its practitioners attach different meanings to its terms and
concepts is no great advertisement for psychoanalysis. Most of the
contributors here are concerned with the definition of terms. Terms such as
enactment, internal object, narcisistic cathexis, unconscious fantasies and
the patient's representational world are certainly in need of clarification,
and it was helpful to witness the contributors grappling with them.
The book's title is an overstatement: psychoanalysis is such a static
discipline that when it moves it moves only slightly. The movement lies only
in the detail. The basic ingredients remain in place. Interpretation is still
the principal therapeutic strategy. All dreams are still considered to be wish
fulfilments, even when they so obviously are not. The Oedipus complex remains
a central concept: one contributor even considers it to be hard-wired. In
short, psychoanalysis continues to turn in upon itself, which, in the long
run, can only be to its detriment.
