Anne-Marie Sandler

Clinical and observational psychoanalytic research : roots of a controversy

Few topics elicit greater controversy within psychoanalysis today than the role of research in justifying or expanding upon analytic theory. The text collects papers from a London conference, along with additional material, to explore the work of discussants Daniel Stern and Andre Green. Stern, whose work and psychoanalysis and infant observation is world-renowned, and Green, the French psychoanalyst whose trenchant views on the limitations of research are equally well known, each focus on the issue of infant research and its long history within the psychoanalytic movement.Additional discussions by three prominent British psychoanalysts, Anne Alvarez, Irma Brenman Pick, and Rozine Jozef Perelberg, expose a different point of view from that of green and Stern. Also included is a previous debate on this topic between Andre Green and Robert S. Wallerstein, former president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. An illuminating introductory chapter by Riccardo Steiner further describes the main points of the debate with marvelous clarity. This book will be invaluable for all those who wish to involve themselves with contemporary views on this important topic.

The psychoanalytic legacy of Anna Freud

This paper presents some aspects of Anna Freuds work in a way that is rather different from the conventional accounts of her contributions. It focuses on some of the factors that I believe have led to her particular contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice-inevitably, with special emphasis on her work with children. In looking back at Anna Freuds work from todays vantage point, it is clear that she was, as Robert Wallerstein put it (1984), a radical innovator as well as a staunch conservative.

Regression und Anti-Regression

The authors describe an anti-regressive function of the ego, which in everyday life maintains a mature functional level and in psychoanalytic works takes the form of resistance. The authors stress the necessity of creating a climate during analysis that permits a controlled relaxation of the anti-regressive function.