Chapter 14 Psychoanalytic Heuristics

This contribution is based on two works by Joseph Sandler (the second written in collaboration with Anne-Marie Sandler) published in 1983 in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis: ‘Reflections on some relations between psychoanalytic concepts and psychoanalytic practice’, and ‘The “second censorship”, the “three box model” and some technical implications’. These two works develop concepts that are closely linked to each other; in fact, it could be said that the first work finds its ‘stimulus’ in, and is theoretically dependent on, the second.

The purpose of the second paper was to formulate certain theoretical proposals that link the topographical and the structural concepts of Freud’s thinking on the constitution of the psychic apparatus. The authors translate these proposals into a theoretical scheme—the ‘three box model’. When considered in close connection with clinical practice, the Sandlers’ text has theoretical implications—finding a bridge between the two conceptual frameworks—that consequently have a bearing on the theory of technique. There is, moreover, an epistemological aspect to it regarding the construction of psychoanalytic theory and the production of new theories, models and heuristic schemes.

This epistemological aspect is explicitly dealt with in the first work, and it will be the object of my comments, which focus on an idea that I share with J. Sandler (1983): ‘What is critical is not what psychoanalytic theory should be but what should be emphasized within the whole compass of psychoanalytic thinking. And what should be emphasized is that which relates to the work we have to do’ (37). I wish to point out here that these epistemological comments do not make general reference to the validity or the scientific standing of psychoanalytic theories, which have already been presented often enough, but to the practical use of analytic theories—to what ‘we have to do’.

The ‘three box model’ described by the Sandlers derives from the well-known stat