This book contains a selection of the Sigmund Freud Memorial Lectures on psychoanalytic psychology delivered by eminent British, French and American analysts, pointing out that there is a tendency to consider pathological processes in terms of the vicissitudes of the person's object relationships.

Joseph Sandler qualified as a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society. He was the Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis in the University of London and Director of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, and in private practice in London. He was formerly the first Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Editor of the 'International Journal of Psychoanalysis' and the 'International Review of Psychoanalysis', and was President of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

The Freud Memorial Professorship at University College London -- Introduction -- The psychoanalytic life history -- The legacy of Sigmund Freud -- Psychoanalysis and freedom of thought -- Unconscious wishes and human relationships -- Psychoanalysis and ordinary modes of thought -- Psychoanalysis as a natural science -- The Freudian left and the theory of cultural revolution -- Psychoanalysis and the natural sciences: the brain-behaviour connection from Freud to the present -- The role of illusion in the psychoanalytic cure -- Perversion and the universal law -- Memory as preparation: developmental and psychoanalytic perspectives -- The id-or the child within?