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This well-written book facilitates in overall grasp of Freus's gerneral psychological theories by ordering his nmodels of the mind across there
overlapping frames of reference. Regarded as “the basic coexisting conceptual frameworks in his writings” (p. 71, the Freudian frames of reference correspond to historical phases of the theory: the affect-trauma (seduction hypothesis, mid 1880s-1897), emphasizing adaptation to overstimulating external events; the topographical (instintual drive-con-flict phase, 1897-1923), stressing endogenous (intrapsychic) excitation and its management; and the structural (tripartite model, 1923-1938), encompassing adaptation to both external and internal influences via the ego and its functioning. Taken together, these frameworks serve as “organizers” (p. 7) of complex psychological concepts, contextualizing their sometimes changing meanings; within each referential frame, theoretical inconsistencies and variations are removed. The authors emphasize that their entire effort “has been to provide a basis for understanding and working with later psychoanalytic formulations … we are convinced that it is necessary to return to the roots of the psychoanalytic theory of mental functioning, and that a historical approach is vital for putting into perspective the continuously changing post-Freud psychoanalytic approaches” (p. 185).
Sandler and his coauthors supplement the frames of reference with a helpful “broader view” (p. 33) of Freudian metapsychology, which they present as a set of interrelated assumptions or tenets. The persisting influence of these assumptions can be shown by the lines along which psychoanalytic theory has progressed. Freud's original emphasis on psychoanalysis as a general psychology, whereby pathological mental functioning, or clinical theory, is understood in terms of the normal, is the most general example. The tenet that probably has had the most generative theoretical power for psychoanalysis refers to psychological