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This collection of papers reflects more than twenty years' research work, largely emerging from the project known as the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index. Originally, the research per se arose more or less accidentally. The then Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, directed by Anna Freud, had an increasing accumulation of regular therapy reports on the many children undergoing psychoanalysis five times a week. Joseph Sandler found himself in charge of a small group charged with constructing an index of all the material thus available, in order to make it more accessible for research, teaching and reference. Problems soon emerged as to how various items should be indexed—that is, as to 'how to integrate them with psychoanalytic theory'. 'Many definitions, previously thought to be satisfactory, appeared ambiguous…and many concepts regularly used in theoretical discussions…were seen to lack…precision. Examination of discrepancies between what was expected on the basis of current psychoanalytic theory and what was found in practice, led to reformulations of many accepted psychoanalytic concepts…' What first appeared as an interference to indexing clinical reports, turned out to be the spur to a series of major research endeavours. Sandler notes the following as examples of concepts that had to be reconsidered: the pleasure principle, the superego and ego ideal, identification, introjection, incorporation, internalization, the ego and the self, mental representation, adaptation, narcissism, fixation and regression, fantasy, mental energy, sublimation, psychological structure, trauma, transference, object relationships, depression, and the general theory of affects. A formidable list indeed, and one which gives an idea of the theoretical field, or indeed theoretical world, of these enquiries.
The body of this volume consists of 21 chapters, each a copy or edited version of a paper published or presented by Sandler alone or in conjunction with colleagues between 1959 and