Joseph 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.

A technique for facilitating the rotation of factor axes, based on an equivalence between persons and tests

A technique is outlined which may facilitate the rotation of factor axes to a meaningful position. It is based on certain relationships between the results of test and person factor analysis, and consists essentially of supplementing the test factor space with tests which are thetest-equivalents of persons or groups of persons. These persons may be, for instance, well-known “types” in the domain being investigated, or even “freaks.” The ways in which these persons may be selected and used to determine the final rotated position of the factor axes is discussed.

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.

Piaget's Approach to Problems of Intellectual Development

In an attempt to demonstrate the way in which Jean Piaget looks at intelligence and its development, a comparison was made with the more usual psychometric approach. Two subtests of the Terman‐Merrill revision of the Stanford Binet intelligence test were taken as a basis for this comparison, and it was shown that Piagets interests in this field are directed towards the development of the thought processes which lie behind apparently simple tasks. He is not primarily concerned with the allocation of abilities to various age levels, but rather with the development of the internalised structures and mechanisms which enable the child to understand and solve various intellectual problems.