Prologue

IN THE EARLY 1960S, JOSEPH SANDLER, TRAINED IN EGO PSYCHOLOGY and working at the Hampstead Clinic with Anna Freud, began writing papers that reduced the chasm between psychoanalytic theory, clinical experience, and psychoanalytic research. He began exploring the characteristics of the superego and ego ideal. The ego psychology of the time was inadequate to explain his clinical observations. He understood that many of the concepts of object relations theory and Kleinian psychology explained his clinical observations and were congruous with ego psychology.

During the next four decades, with courage and creativity, Sandler wrote papers that contributed to the depolarization and pluralism of many psychoanalytic models and concepts. He created bridges that spanned psychoanalysis with cognitive and developmental sciences. He developed research models that helped him expand his ideas. The three concepts that most characterize Sandler's creativity are the affect of safety, the representational world, and role responsiveness.

The Editors of Psychoanalytic Inquiry devote this entire issue to Joseph Sandler's work because it celebrates the best of psychoanalysis. It exemplifies his devotion to improving the understanding of the complexity of the clinical experience. Because of Sandler's background in human development and child analysis, he understood that the analysis rests on an evolutionary process which is set in the here and now. He appreciated that in the clinical situation affects must play a central role guided by the development of ideals and values. He realized that the psychoanalytic theory that he was originally given had gaping deficiencies, but enormous value and meaning which he could use as the foundation for creativity and innovation.

We asked six contributors to write about Sandler's three major contributions: the affect of safety, the representational world, and role responsiveness. And two discussants of their papers explore the creativity and scope of Sandler