Anne-Marie Sandler

Anne-Marie Sandler (born December 15, 1925 in Geneva ; died July 25, 2018 in London , born Anne-Marie Weil ) was a British psychologist , psychoanalyst , child and adolescent psychotherapist and training analyst for the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPAS). In psychology, her focus was on clinical psychology . She was the wife of Joseph Sandler , whom she survived by 20 years.

Personal

Sandler's parents, Otto and Hildegard Weil, were Germans of Jewish origin. They lived in Geneva, where their father had started as an elevator operator in the Geneva department store Grand Passage and was promoted to general manager. He came from Berlin. Her mother, née Oberdorf, came from Hamburg, where she taught French until they got married. The family on the father's side had emigrated to Switzerland in 1907, so that they survived the Holocaust unscathed. The entire family on the mother's side was "probably murdered," as Klaus Grabska wrote in his obituary. Sandler's father met her mother during a stay in Hamburg. In 1921 she moved to Switzerland, both married and had a son in 1922. Anne-Marie was born three years later.

Jewish origins initially played no role in Sandler's childhood. In 1933, when she was eight years old, her father explained to her what was going on in the Nazi state in Germany. From then on, German should no longer be spoken in the family for fear of annexation . The parents began to get involved in refugee aid and looked after Jewish children who were sent to Switzerland. Sandler experienced the desperation of these children without really understanding the background. As a result of all of this, according to Grabska, “a split relationship with German developed early on,” although she loved the language.

After her brother Gérard lost his life in 1948 - he was killed while defusing a street bomb while fighting for an Israeli state in Palestine - she decided, at the age of 23, to have an initial personal analysis of the loss to process.

In 1957 Anne-Marie Weil married the doctor and child psychiatrist Joseph Sandler (1927-1998), who came from a Jewish family in South Africa , had emigrated to England and brought a daughter from his first marriage. She had met him in London at a party among colleagues. She had two children with him, daughter Catherine in 1958 and son Paul in 1962.

As President of the British Psychoanalytic Society (BPAS), Rosine Jozef Perelberg wrote in her tribute in 2015 that Sandler understands what patients have to struggle with and that this goes hand in hand with a modesty that contrasts with her creativity, which she is always generous made available. Sandler had the ability to build bridges between people and traditions. She was characterized by a keen mind on the one hand and a pronounced compassion on the other.

Anne-Marie Sandler died in 2018 at the age of 92. In addition to the three children, she left seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Professional background

After graduating from high school, Sandler studied psychology at the University of Geneva . From 1947 to 1950 she was an assistant to Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder . Under the guidance of these pioneers in developmental psychology , she carried out a study on children's sense of home and understanding of foreignness for UNESCO .

In a conversation from a series by the British Society for Psychoanalysis (BPAS) dedicated to intergenerational dialogue, Sandler reported in 2013 on her path into psychoanalysis . As a young woman she wanted to work with children, but she did not want to raise or teach the children. From this dilemma she had the opportunity to become an analyst for children and adolescents.

Ludwig Binswanger advised her to go to London. She followed his advice, emigrated in 1950 and joined Anna Freud at the London Hampstead Clinic - later the Anna Freud Center  - which had gained an international reputation since 1947 for its psychoanalytic work as a teaching institute for child therapy. In 1952 Anna Freud took over the management of the clinic. With her, Sandler completed her training, which she completed in 1954. She did her training analysis with Augusta Bonnard. From 1965 to 1968 she supplemented her professional development with training as a psychoanalyst for adults, and during this time she was in training analysis with Edit Gyömrői .

Although Sandler was trained by Anna Freud, she never turned away from her and dedicated a publication on her scientific legacy to her in 1996, she was equally inspired by Melanie Klein's theoretically different positions .

Act

Sandler practiced in London. The journalist Susie Orbach , a former training analyst with Sandler, described her in her obituary in the British daily The Guardian as a technically savvy and intrepid analyst who was not afraid of difficult emotional states in the human soul. Generations of practitioners are influenced by it. Their interest in people was just as contagious as their joy when they were able to free themselves from their suffering. This interest was directed both to those who suffered and to those who wanted to help them escape their suffering and find their way back to life. She always had the couple in a helping relationship in view, two people with their hopes and unconscious intentions that influence each other and thus at the same time influence the common process. In doing so, Sandler was keen to give trainees and experienced analysts an attitude that was different from the reductionist and cold application of theory and practice that has been found at some training institutes.

In addition to her everyday work, Sandler temporarily chaired various psychoanalytic organizations. From 1983 to 1987 she was President of the European Psychoanalytic Federation , from 1990 to 1993 President of the British Specialized Society (BPAS), from 1993 to 1996 Director of the Anna Freud Center in London and from 1993 to 1997 Vice President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPV ). She had campaigned for the establishment of the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Committee / COCAP and was the first to chair it in 1997. In addition to her membership in these organizations, she became an honorary member of the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG) in 1997 and was an honorary member of the Frankfurt Sigmund Freud Institute for many years .

Sandler submitted numerous publications, some together with her husband. For example, in a paper published in 1983, in which they reassessed the connection between Freud's topographical and his structural model , the couple advised always first to work on and dissolve the patient's resistance and only then to devote themselves to reconstructive work. Their last book together was published in 1998 and testifies to the efforts of the couple to integrate theory and practice as well as various psychoanalytic concepts and thus to help settle school disputes, according to Perelberg.

With all the care that Sandler showed in her work, according to Orbach, her playfulness and her mischievous smile should not be forgotten, which, despite all the seriousness, were her own.

In England

After completing her education, Sandler began working at the Child Department of St. George's Hospital in 1954 , where she was able to participate in a research project by Anna Freud that examined the development of children born blind. Their behavior was observed in different environments, at home as well as in a specially set up kindergarten. There the children were cared for according to psychoanalytic principles. The progress of their development was regularly discussed with the mothers. For example, some of them expressed concern that their children did not turn their heads when they spoke, as other children did. Sandler discovered that children's attention was focused on hearing, so they adjusted their heads accordingly. This realization reassured the parents. Because the world of inanimate objects is less interesting for blind children, they are more dependent than others on their mothers and their stimulation to open up the world of external objects, says Sandler.

These early experiences and findings, in which eight-month anxiety - popularly known as Fremdeln - was also examined, later flowed into both the work with adults and into a publication by Sandler entitled Beyond Eight-Month Anxiety (German: Jenseits der Eight Month Anxiety) is one of the standard works .

Sandler did not see himself as someone who knew better, but saw himself as a partner especially for the most damaged children. Their often difficult behavior showed her the way to an understanding in which symptoms got a meaning. She understood that the children were trying to help themselves with their behavior. It was Sandler's concern to support them in this and to work with them at the same time to develop other possibilities with which the children and those around them were better off.

Finally, Sandler became a training analyst and supervisor of the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPAS), participated in the training of psychoanalysts and child therapists, founded a psychoanalytic practice in London and published the knowledge she had gained in her various fields of activity. Their activities in London interrupted in the late 1970s, when she accompanied her husband to Israel after a call to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem had assumed.

From the beginning, Sandler was interested in integrating various theoretical positions, as far as this seemed justifiable to her. Since her husband shared this concern, a series of joint essays and the book Inner Object Relationships , which created a basis for the effort to integrate Kleinian positions and further developed ego psychology , emerged. It was published five months before Joseph Sandler's death in 1998 and was dedicated to the seven grandchildren. Like many publications, this book is clinically oriented, but always based on metapsychology , and introduces concepts about the feeling of security and perceptual identity , among other things. Grabska describes it as a “Freudian response to Melanie Klein's school” and as an effort towards a “contemporary Freudian perspective”.

In her psychoanalytic treatments and supervisions, nor in relation to her own colleagues, Sandler did not shy away from addressing sensitive topics and possibly publishing them about them. In 2007 she wrote a longer treatise on sexual abuse in training analyzes in the book Derailings in der Psychoanalyse, and in doing so focused a. a. on the so-called Masud Khan case , which was kept silent in the British specialist society for many years.

In Germany

In addition to her interest in clinical work, Sandler could not avoid studying the horrors that befell the victims of National Socialism before and during the Second World War . Growing up with German as her mother tongue, which her father had forbidden to speak, she had to hide her love of German literature and language for a long time.

When a discussion arose in the late 1970s about a possible rapprochement between international and German psychoanalysis, which led to heated controversy among the National Socialists because of its role, she did not want to participate. But she got involved - and became the ambassador of a process for the reintegration of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) into the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPV). Orbach described this process in the Guardian as one of truth and reconciliation. Sandler gave lectures and encouraged the Germans to deal with their very personal history in connection with the Third Reich and its consequences in the following generations. And she listened. She accompanied the German colleagues on their way of a difficult necessity of having to deal with the atrocities of the past and with the dismantling of all compassion in a culture that was outwardly past but still had an effect on people's souls. This new relationship with Germany made it possible for Sandler to track down her split relationship to this country and her love for its literature, music and language on the one hand and the fear of the language acquired early and then forbidden on the other, and finally to be able to enjoy it without feelings of guilt .

The background to the discourse on the relationship between German and international psychoanalysis is the fact that there is a specialist society in Germany, the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV), which was represented in the IPV, while the DPG was excluded for many years. The cause of the controversy was the IPA congress, which took place in Jerusalem for the first time in 1977 after the war and the Nazi era . There the German group expressed their wish to host a next congress in Berlin. She was indignantly rejected. After an initial disappointment, the events at the IPA Congress of 1977 set in motion self-reflective processes among all those involved, which looked different in the various organizations. The Nazareth Conferences were brought into being, the DPV presented the results of their search for clues at a conference in Hamburg in 1985 and in the same year Regine Lockot published her dissertation entitled Remembering and Working Through : On the History of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in National Socialism . This was later followed by her book The Purification of Psychoanalysis .

The DPG started its work with the support of Anne-Marie Sandler, who accompanied it for many years. Between 1991 and 2016, annual casuistic-technical conferences with Sandler as supervisor took place at different locations in Germany under the leadership of the DPG . In addition, she regularly took part in the annual meetings of the DPG and was available to the psychoanalytic colleagues for supervision outside of the conference and conference framework. They took place in German. Her aim was to understand the needs of those presenting the case as well as the suffering of their patients. In Sandler's understanding, both were an expression of the attempt to somehow bring something up to speech in the hope of someone who can hear and understand.

With her casuistic work, Sandler contributed to bringing the psychoanalytic practice of the DPG closer to international standards, supporting her on her "difficult and long journey into the International Psychoanalytic Association" and helping her to re-enter the IPA. In 2001 the DPG was initially accepted as a Provisional Society and in 2009 as a Component Society .

Fonts (selection)

• Jean Piaget, Anne-Marie Weil: The development of the child's idea of ​​home and the judgments about other countries . In: Ali Wacker (ed.): The development of the understanding of society among children . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, New York 1976, ISBN 3-593-32179-3 , pp. 127-148 .
• Beyond Eight-Month Anxiety . In: Int. J. Psycho-Anal. tape 58 , 1977, pp. 195-207 (English).
• Early Childhood Experience and Adult Psychopathology . In: Psyche . tape 35 , 1981, pp. 305-318 .
• Dialogue without words. Non-Verbal Aspects of Psychoanalytic Interaction . In: Psyche . tape 37 , 1983, pp. 701-714 .
• Joseph Sandler, Anne-Marie Sandler: Theoretical and Technical Comments on Regression and Anti-Regression . In: Int. J. Psycho-Anal. tape 75 , 1994, pp. 431-439 (English).
• Anne-Marie Sandler, Peter Fonagy : On the transference and its interpretation . In: Analytical child and adolescent psychotherapy . No. 96 , 1997, pp. 373-396 .
• Joseph Sandler, Anne-Marie Sandler: Inner object relationships. Origin and structure . With a foreword by Otto F. Kernberg . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-608-91717-9 (English: Internal objects revisited . Translated by Ulrike Stopfel).
• Preface . In: Anne Hurry (Hrsg.): Psychoanalysis and development support of children . Brandes and Apsel, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, ISBN 3-86099-750-5 , pp. 9 f . (English: Psychoanalysis and developmental therapy . Translated by Elisabeth Vorspohl).
• Anne-Marie Sandler, Rosemary Davies (ed.): Psychoanalysis in Great Britain (=  Psychoanalytische Blätter . Volume 22 ). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-46021-X .
• Anne-Marie Sandler, Hanna Segal, Leslie Sohn, Gigliola Fornari-Spoto: Forms of Transfer . Ed .: Melitta Fischer-Kern. Facultas, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85076-661-6 .
• Institutional responses to boundary violations: The case of Masud Khan . In: Int. J. Psychoanal. tape 85 , 2004, pp. 27-44 (English).
• Conflict and reconciliation . In: Ludger M. Hermanns (Hrsg.): Psychoanalysis in self-portrayals . tape 10 . Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt a. M. 2015, ISBN 978-3-95558-070-4 , pp. 221-287 .

literature

• Haydee Faimberg, Donald Campbell: Anne-Marie Sandler (1925-2018) . In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis . tape 100 , no. 2 , 2019, p. 377–383 , doi : 10.1080 / 00207578.2019.1587586 (English).
• Ingo Focke, Bernd Gutmann: Encounters with Anne-Marie Sandler. Practice and theory of their treatment technique . Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8379-2875-4 .
• Klaus Grabska: In Memoriam Anne-Marie Sandler . In: German Psychoanalytical Society . October 17, 2018 ( dpg-psa.de [accessed October 6, 2019]).

Radio

• Regina Oehler: Interview with Anne Marie Sandler . In: hr2: double head . 13th of May 2013.

Awards

• 1998 Sigourney Award for significant contributions in the field of psychoanalysis
• 2015 Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis of the European Psychoanalytic Federation (EPF)

Web links

• Anne-Marie Sandler at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis (English)
• Institute of Psychoanalysis: Meeting Anne Marie Sandler on YouTube , November 13, 2013, accessed October 6, 2019 (4:01 am).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Susie Orbach: Anne-Marie Sandler obituary . In: The Guardian . August 9, 2018 (English, theguardian.com [accessed October 8, 2019]).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Anne-Marie Sandler geb. Because (1925-2018). In: Psychoanalysts. Biographical lexicon. Retrieved October 6, 2019 .  
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Klaus Grabska: In Memoriam Anne-Marie Sandler. In: German Psychoanalytical Society. 2018, accessed October 10, 2019 .  
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Anne Marie Sandler. In: Institute of Psychoanalysis. British Psychoanalytical Society. Retrieved October 6, 2019 .  
5. ^ Institute of Psychoanalysis: Meeting Anne Marie Sandler on YouTube , November 13, 2013, accessed on October 6, 2019 (4:01 am).
6. ^ Anna Freud National Center for Children and Families. Retrieved October 6, 2019 (English, short: Anna Freud Center).  
7. ^ Anne-Marie Sandler: The Psychoanalytic Legacy of Anna Freud . In: Psychoanal. St. Child . tape 51 , 1996, p. 270-284 (English).
8. ^ Joseph Sandler, Anne-Marie Sandler: The 'Second Censorship', the 'Three Box Model' and Some Technical Implications . In: Int. J. Psycho-Anal. tape 64 , 1983, pp. 413-425 (English).
9. ^ Joseph Sandler, Anne-Marie Sandler: Internal Objects Revisited . Karnac, London 1998, ISBN 978-1-85575-191-0 (English).
10. ^ Anne-Marie Sandler: Aspects of Passivity and Ego Development in the Blind Infant . In: Psychoanal. St. Child . tape 18 , 1963, p. 343-360 (English).
11. ↑ Anne-Marie Sandler: Reactions of the psychoanalytic institutions to violations of boundaries - Masud Khan and Winnicott . In: Sylvia Zwettler-Otte (Ed.): Derailments in psychoanalysis. Ethical problems . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-647-49125-7 , p. 93–119 , doi : 10.13109 / 9783666491252.93 ( gbv.de [PDF; 29 kB ; accessed on October 6, 2019] Table of Contents).
12. ^ Past IPA Congresses. Retrieved October 6, 2019 .  
13. ↑ Karen Brecht, Volker Friedrich, Ludger M. Hermanns, Isidor J. Kaminer, Dierk H. Juelich (eds.): Here life goes on in a strange way ... On the history of psychoanalysis in Germany (=  library of psychoanalysis ). Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8379-2096-3 .
14. ↑ Regine Lockot: Remembering and working through. On the history of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy under National Socialism . Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2002, ISBN 978-3-89806-171-1 (first edition: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985).
15. ↑ Regine Lockot: The Purification of Psychoanalysis. The German Psychoanalytic Society as reflected in documents and contemporary witnesses (1933–1951) . Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8379-2240-0 (first edition: Edition diskord, Tübingen 1994).