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.
Freud's Models of the Mind is a fitting coda to the distinguished publishing career of the late Dr. Joseph Sandler. This volume, the initial issuance of the monograph series cosponsored by the Psychoanalysis Unit of University College, London, and the Anna Freud Center, London, presents an overview of the models of the mind implicit in the three phases of Freud's theory. While clarifying the concepts, Sandler et al. take the judicious position that “it thus becomes essential for those who wish to master the subject, even at relatively elementary level, to tolerate certain ambiguities involved in the theory, rather than tray to eliminate them, for ambiguity need not constitute confusion” (p. 5)
They present the models organized along the three Freudian frames of reference: the affect-trauma (the seduction phase, mid-1880s-1897), the topographical (the instinctual drive-conflict phase, 1897-1923), and the structural (the tripartie model, 1923-1939), with the heart of the book (8 of the 13 chapters) centering on the topographical. This is appropriate if one considers that 15 of the volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud consist of his writings during this phase. Others, such as Gill (1963), also have highlighted this phase; however, for this reader, the lucidity of the Sandler presentation is heuristically for superior, if only for the clarity of writing. Contrary to the position of Arlow and Brenner (1964) in regard to the irreconcilability of the topographic and structural models, Sandler et al. make a strong case that not only is the topographical frame of relevant, it is still