On Skill and Sublimation

The Achilles Heel of Psychoanalysis: Meditations on Motivation: Commentary on Paper by Robert P. Drozek

“…But in the work of Loewald (1960Loewald ( /1980 or Sandler and Joffe (1966), healthy development also entails an unconditional valuing of one's own COMMENTARY ON PAPER BY ROBERT P. DROZEK and the other's subjecthood-a valuing that Loewald (1960Loewald ( /1980 referred to as love for the individual and for individual development and about which Joffe and Sandler (1967) have written, By "value" we do not refer specifically to moral value but the term is used rather in the sense of feeling qualities which may be positive or negative, relatively simple or extremely complicated. It is these affective values, sign-values, so to speak, which give all representations their significance.…”

Towards a unified theory of human aggression

“…As Sandler has remarked : There is thus a close relationship obtaining between drive and apparatus. What we normally understand by the sexual and aggressive instinctual drives are complex phenomena involving the whole spectrum of discharge characteristics and associated tensions and pleasures (Sandler & Joffe, 1966).…”

On empathy, and regression in service of the other*

“…It must be said that the process of rescuing, as distinguished from the fulfilment of fantasy by the definitive act or by the convincing illusion of rescue, may temporarily alleviate guilt or anxiety. By cathecting an activity, and so replacing the object (Sandler & Joffe, 1966), the practice of therapy may come to replace or substitute for the internalized conflict and object. But such marriage to one's work has a neurotically compulsive basis, and it is subject to the usual changes of fortune of the compulsive defences.…”