Joseph Sandler has selected for this volume a collection of 21 papers which he and his colleagues published between 1960 and 1974. Sandler has written a preface as well as an appendix, in which he describes how he has made use of the Hampstead Index as a method of psychoanalytic research. He has also added a commentary through which he links 'the papers together so that the book is more than the sum of the chapters contained in it' (p. xix). The articles represent the authors' efforts to clarify a number of ambiguous psychoanalytic concepts. These concepts include superego, ego ideal, fantasy, trauma, depression,