I did wonder why the publishers had not included this book in their excellent series, ‘The Makers of Modern Psychotherapy’, but I presume it is because Sandler was still alive (sadly, he died during the preparation of the book). In fact, it has been included (as no.35) in another series, ‘The New Library of Psychoanalysis’, the object of which is “… to provide a forum of increasing mutual understanding between psychoanalysts and those working in other disciplines” (p. ii). In this, I believe it has failed. It is written by psychoanalysts for psychoanalysts, and makes no concessions to the non-psychoanalytic reader. Few references are made to work outside of psychoanalysis (though Segal does draw parallels with Chomsky's view of language), and little interest is shown in establishing connections between psychoanalysis and other disciplines. Implicit in much of what is written is that psychoanalysis is so much a unique approach, that it would be seriously compromised if it made concessions to alternative approaches. I am sure this is not true.

The book assumes the form of a festschrift. Consequently, only in the first chapter do we get a (very necessary) overview of Joseph Sandler's major contributions. We are told that he helped to close the gap between the American ego psychologists and the British Kleinian and object relations theorists. The remaining 14 chapters comprise a series of essays by eminent psychoanalysts on issues that are linked to Sandler's preoccupations, but say very little about him. In their review of these essays, Fonagy & Cooper use such phrases as breathtaking, masterfully brilliant, exceptionally lucid, wonderfully erudite and scholarly. I found them to be dense, convoluted and packed with undefined, psychoanalytic jargon. I consider psychoanalysis to be one of the few disciplines to take account of the true complexity of human thinking, but I also consider the task of the theorist to be to clarify and simplify.

We are told that Sandler aimed to divest psychoanalysis of conceptual confusion, that he was preoccupied with the multiple and frequently incompatible meanings attached to terms and concepts, and that his writing is a tribute to the tolerance of ambiguity required of theoreticians such as himself. That its practitioners attach different meanings to its terms and concepts is no great advertisement for psychoanalysis. Most of the contributors here are concerned with the definition of terms. Terms such as enactment, internal object, narcisistic cathexis, unconscious fantasies and the patient's representational world are certainly in need of clarification, and it was helpful to witness the contributors grappling with them.

The book's title is an overstatement: psychoanalysis is such a static discipline that when it moves it moves only slightly. The movement lies only in the detail. The basic ingredients remain in place. Interpretation is still the principal therapeutic strategy. All dreams are still considered to be wish fulfilments, even when they so obviously are not. The Oedipus complex remains a central concept: one contributor even considers it to be hard-wired. In short, psychoanalysis continues to turn in upon itself, which, in the long run, can only be to its detriment.