You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book is fascinating, delightful, unique, and will be a much used basic book on every psychoanalyst's bookshelf. As readers we become participants in the evolution of the most singular research project in the annals of psychoanalysis known as the Hampstead Index. The project was initiated by Dorothy Burlingame not as research, but as an attempt to categorize and classify psychoanalytic case material in order to make it accessible to future research. The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic originated in 1947 as a training and research center in child analysis, under the directorship of Anna Freud. Therapists, well supervised, saw their patients daily and wrote reports weekly and every two months. Indexing the burgeoning material became essential. In 1956 Anna Freud invited Joseph Sandler to take charge of the index project. The book treats us to the exciting challenges that arise when clinical material is to be organized to fit conceptual categories and to Sandler's abilities to turn these challenges into creative research journeys. The chapters represent in chronological order papers arising out of the index project published by Sandler and co-workers from 1959-1974. With admiration we watch Sandler recognize conceptual ambiguities, understand and explain their historical context, and attempt to clarify definitions that are intended to facilitate the therapists' task of indexing their material for greater usefulness.
Chapter Three, called “The Concept of Superego,” introduces us to the basic process of the journey. It begins with the observation that many categories of the index were fruitfully used while other categories were “understocked.” Such underutilization was particularly striking in the case of the category of superego, and this was not due to any lack of appreciation on the part of the therapists of its role in child development. Why was there a tendency to veer away from the conceptualization of material in superego terms? For one thing, the therapists cle