ABSTRACT
Joseph Sandler is a central contemporary theoretician on affect. His writings show many developments and shifts of emphasis in an effort to adapt psychoanalytic theory to clinical practice, while at the same time attempting to capture the clinical experience itself. He argued, basing himself on various observations, that a person defends not against the 'causes' of his feelings, but against the feelings themselves, which may be regarded as causes; feelings cause wishes, although they are also reactions to wishes. In 1960, Sandler discussed the problem of the superego. In 1967 appeared Sandler's paper "Trauma, Strain and Development," in which he suggested that discrepancy between mental representations causes pain. Sandler believes that, subjectively, pain is seen as part of all unpleasurable feeling states; it roughly equals the experience we call suffering. Sandler is known for his conceptualizations of feeling states, well-being, and safety, and for his having linked affects to object relationships.
