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Dimensions in Psychoanalysis lives up to its title, celebrating the first quarter century of lectures given by holders of the Freud Memorial Chair at the University of London and superbly edited by Joseph Sandler, a holder of the Chair himself. It convincingly shows the breadth and depth of modern psychoanalytic thought.
In a brief foreword by Sir James Lighthill, Provost of the University College, the history of the University and of the Freud Chair is reviewed. Begun as a visiting professorship, then progressing to a five-year program at the University, it crossed departmental boundaries and provided a rigorous and comprehensive exposure to psychoanalytic theory, extending even to Middlesex Hospital and its medical school.
In the introduction, Sandler develops the thesis that since the time of Freud psychoanalysis has developed in many different directions. By compiling the lectures given by the holders of the Freud Chair, each a recognized authority and each lecturing in his or her own area of interest, Sandler has provided the reader with a delightful opportunity to be present at these inaugural lectures over the years.
In his 1975 lecture, Roy Schafer presents his idea of a new "action" language for psychoanalysis with which to enable psychoanalysts to construct "life histories" for their analysands. This language would be freed of Freud's natural science basis and instead rely on more humanistic assumptions. It is based on three theses about the nature of clinical psychoanalysis: first, that it constructs a personal past history based on the psychoanalytic theory of development; second, that it constructs a present subjective world based on an understanding of the past along with the relationship to the analyst and the present; and third, that both of these require a systematic transformation in the language by which the analysand defines and understands his or her life history. The result is an