Joseph Sandler

This is an extremely sad occasion for me. It is also an honour to be asked to say a few words about Joe, as I feel that so many of you here today would have so much to say about the ways in which he has had an impact on you and your thinking. Anne-Marie, the family, and the British Society itself have received hundreds of letters expressing feelings of great loss.

Joe Sandler was one of the most outstanding contemporary thinkers in psycho-analysis. Colleagues and friends from around the world have been in a state of shock, since they received the news of his terminal illness just a few weeks ago. As you know, just 15 days earlier Joe Sandler had delivered a paper at a conference at the British Psycho-Analytical Society in honour of Hanna Segal, an esteemed colleague and friend. This was an expression of his generosity to his friends, but also a testimony that he was thinking and working until the very end. He received so many prizes and honorary doctorates, an international recognition that went back to the early years when he was awarded the prestigious Union of South Africa Scholarship, which allowed him to come to England.

Joseph Sandler made fundamental contributions to both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis with his wisdom and incomparable understanding of psychoanalytic ideas and concepts, which he helped to elaborate. He had a profound understanding that symptoms were expressions of and solutions for conflicts, and insisted that his students fully understood that. This deep understanding of human nature and respect for his patients was expressed in his practice of psychoanalysis: he stressed the part played by feelings of well-being in the regulation of mental functioning. Each individual develops coping mechanisms in the face of helplessness in order to feel safe. Symptoms may be understood as the individual's attempt to provide a protective shield in order to maintain an experience of psychic equilibrium. This obviously does not always work, a fact wh