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Joseph Sandler was a wise and productive contributor to psychoanalysis. In collaboration with his wife Anne-Marie and other colleagues, he laid the foundations for a theory of object relations and an associated clinical standpoint that enriched ego psychology and moved it toward a two-person perspective. His untimely and unexpected death, which occurred shortly after the publication of this book, left all who knew or learned from him saddened and impoverished. Included among the many works he left behind is this slender but powerful volume, which provides readers a thoughtful retrospective synthesis of his contributions to psychoanalytic theory and stands as a fitting memorial to his work.
At the heart of the Sandlers' contributions is the assumption that unconscious fantasies and their associated affects are structured around specific wishes for gratifying relationships between the self and significant objects. “Much of our life is involved in the concealed repetition of internalized early object relationships,” including “safety-giving or anxiety-reducing manoeuvres, as well as those that satisfy instinctual wishes” (p. 62). These wishes for relationship press inexorably toward actualization in the external world. “There is a constant need in every individual to externalize his or her ‘internal objects’ (the introjects), to anchor the inner world as far as possible in external reality” (pp. 19-20).
In an important extension of traditional classical theory, the Sandlers argue that conscious and unconscious feeling states, which they believe are the basis of psychological motivation, are determined by more than drive derivatives. In particular, they emphasize the significance to the individual of relationships that provide psychological “nourishment,” affirmation, and reassurance. These affective relational experiences serve a fundamental human need, as they preserve and restore feelings of safety and security. “In every situation of anxiety … there is a reaching towa