Anne Marie Sandler
Psychoanalyst who observed how children understand the world
ANNE-MARIE SANDLER, who has died aged 92, was a psychoanalyst who made important contributions to the treatment of children and adolescents, as well as building up a thriving adult practice. She worked for many years at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic, now known as the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, eventually serving as its director.
As well as the influence of Anna Freud, Anne-marie Sandler was also inspired by the work of Melanie Klein, and she cut an unusual figure in psychoanalytic circles with her willingness to move freely between differing schools.
She was born Anne-marie Weil on December 15 1925 in Geneva to German Jewish parents. Her father, Otto, began his working life in Switzerland as a lift attendant and rose to become managing director of a department store.
Anne Marie studied Psychology at Geneva University, where she was noticed by Jean Piaget, and she began working with him and his assistant Bärbel Inhelder, observing how children understand the world around them.
She found, however, that while the emphasis of their research was on the cognitive aspects of child development, the emotional aspect was being ignored, and she began to look towards psychoanalysis. Piaget engaged her to undertake work under his supervision for Unesco, researching children’s sense of homeland and foreignness.
She next travelled to London to study at the Hampstead Clinic where she worked with young blind children. As well as running a day nursery, she and her fellow workers held analytic therapy sessions with the children, discussing their development with their mothers and observing them at home.
She found that the mothers became depressed when their children were six or seven months old because they felt the infants were unresponsive towards them; she was able to reassure them that the children were responding to the senses available to them: hearing, touch, taste and smell.
Anne-marie Sandler later produced a seminal paper on the subject for the International Journal of Psycho-analysis, “Beyond Eight-month Anxiety”.
In the early 1950s, Anne-marie had met a Jewish psychoanalyst from South Africa named Joseph Sandler at a party, and recognised him from Anna Freud’s weekly meetings at the Hampstead Clinic. Later, Joseph’s dentist wife died, and one evening Annemarie babysat for his daughter.
After what she described as “a wonderful courtship”, they were married in 1957. When Anna Freud heard of their impending nuptials, she announced to the weekly meeting: “I am so pleased that Anne-marie and Dr Sandler are getting married. For some weeks now I have been distracted by noticing their efforts not to gaze at each other during the meetings.”
The couple produced several papers together and their book Internal Objects Revisited (1998) became a standard text on contemporary psychoanalytic theory.
Anne-marie Sandler trained as an adult psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytic Society, and in 1998 she emulated her husband in receiving the Sigourney Award for significant advances in psychoanalysis.
Joseph died that year, while Anne-marie carried on working until she was 90. In later years she spent time in the former East Germany advising psychoanalysts who had been isolated from the analytic mainstream during the communist years.
Away from her work, Anne-marie Sandler was an expert horsewoman and shooter, and loved both jazz and classical music.
She is survived by a daughter and a son, and by her stepdaughter. Her brother Gerard was killed fighting in Palestine in 1948.
Anne-marie Sandler, born December 15 1925, died July 25 2018