As an MD and Ph.D., he insisted that the Chair be placed directly reporting to the Dean of Social Sciences, given the long-standing animosity within the Psychology Department (as documented, for instance in Kahnemann's book on his and Twersky's experiences as students there prior to Sandler).
Sandler took an open, pragmatic approach to psychoanalytic theorising – something particularly important in the wake of the Controversial discussions which had left a three-way split inside the British Society.
[7] Sandler introduced the term actualization into psychoanalysis from literary studies, to cover the process whereby past object-relationships are brought to life within the analytic setting.
[9] Sandler himself saw the process of actualization as adumbrated in the 7th chapter of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams;[10] and similar concepts can be found in ego psychology, which speaks of the 'evocation' of a proxy[9] and among post-Jungians with their talk of a 'complementary' countertransference.
[15] His willingness to look beyond dogmatic theorising and to take on board the normal as well as the abnormal in psychotherapeutic assessment[9] helped facilitate the bridging role he played within the often fragmented world of postmodern psychotherapies.