<p>Sandy Abend has been a close friend of mine for more than twenty&nbsp;years. For decades longer I have been an admirer of his.&nbsp;The qualities that make Sandy a good friend and those that make&nbsp;him an important contributor to our psychoanalytic literature&mdash;not to&nbsp;mention an outstanding clinician&mdash;are, I think, quite similar. He combines&nbsp;<br />
qualities that we don&rsquo;t expect to find together: he is at once gentle&nbsp;and firm, respectful of tradition (even a &ldquo;true-believer&rdquo;) and openminded,&nbsp;conservative and innovative, convinced and curious.&nbsp;These characteristics led him to propose a project that has been an&nbsp;important part of our friendship for a long time now. Sandy invited me&nbsp;to be part of a study group he was putting together; the members were&nbsp;senior analysts, all identified with particular points of view in which&nbsp;were entrenched. But the announced purpose of the group would be,&nbsp;as Sandy put it, &ldquo;to read things that we wouldn&rsquo;t ordinarily read.&rdquo; In the&nbsp;balkanized psychoanalytic world of the time (and still although to a<br />
lesser extent today) this wasn&rsquo;t the kind of thing that one would imagine&nbsp;could engage the interest of analysts who were deeply committed to&nbsp;ideas and institutions that had shaped their long and successful professional&nbsp;careers. But it worked. Or, I should say, it is working, because the&nbsp;group continues to meet and continues to be a highlight of the professional&nbsp;lives of all of us who participate in it.</p><p>The spirit that moved Sandy to create our study group pervades and&nbsp;shapes his writing. More than many of today&rsquo;s thinkers he is committed&nbsp;to a particular theoretical perspective; he is certainly not a pluralist nor&nbsp;to say the least) is he the sort of analyst who seeks out and embraces&nbsp;the latest trend. Sandy coined the term &ldquo;modern conflict theory&rdquo; and&nbsp;he remains loyal to the theory&rsquo;s ideas and to its seminal thinkers. The&nbsp;loyalty is neither simply personal nor abstractly conceptual; he understands&nbsp;and deeply appreciates the enduring clinical value of the contributions<br />
of earlier generations of psychoanalysts.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>