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This book is the outcome of a series of discussions between Anna Freud and the research group at the Hampstead Clinic over a year's time in 1972—73—36 years after the first publication of her classic work, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. The discussions (27 in all) focused on her book chapter by chapter, with at least one session devoted to each chapter. The author, Joseph Sandler, has organized the material into chapters with the same titles as those in the original book. He introduced each chapter with a summary of Anna Freud's chapter which he follows with edited transcriptions of the relevant discussions. As chair of the discussions Sandler acted as both spokesman for the research group and discussion leader. The result is that the discussions are largely a dialogue between Freud and Sandler. Sandler was editorin-chief of The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and is now Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis and director of The Sigmund Freud Center for Study and Research in Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The discussions on the whole are faithful to the description in the dust jacket blurb—“a sentence-by-sentence reconsideration” of Anna Freud's original views in the light of current psychoanalytic