Book review: Europe on the Couch

A Psychoanalytic and Socio-Cultural Exploration of a Continent: Europe on the Couch
Edited by Anna Zajenkowska and Uri Levin (Routledge, 2019)

The Psychoanalytic and Socio-Cultural Exploration of a Continent – Europe on the Couch, is a thought provoking and emotionally stimulating book. It is also educational, if you are interested in understanding more about: the current climate in Europe; the impact of different cultures and the disruption in communities; group dynamics in struggling societies with complex relationships recovering and reacting from traumatic transgenerational histories.  This book is a must read.

Part one takes you on a rollercoaster of atrocities that shocks and evokes a range of emotions: shame, disgust and rage, as each reflection challenges us to face the darkness we are capable of and continually repeating through history.  All that trauma, so much pain and death with a tinge of hope and change and recovery.  I made a list as I read; 2 world wars; walls coming down; Holocaust; slavery; colonialism; opening of concentration camps; shameful atrocities; opening hitherto sealed Eastern European archives; Vichy history of anti-Semitism; Plaza de Mayo; Stalinism; human rights; refugees detained in camps; UK national sovereignty and independence; humanitarian tragedy; industrial revolution; technological revolution; Islamic terrorism.

The purpose of this book was to gather all this rich and often dark history and get the reader to think thoughtfully through in an analytical framework, to make sense of these atrocities and how countries are recovering.  The book brings you into the modern age of money, corruption and technology. There are no stones left uncovered in this historical whirlwind tour of Europe’s history.

After a harrowing collection of historical milestones through Europe’s violent history there is a change of gear, which allows you to catch your breath and an intriguing discussion with Dr Robi Friedman, who manages to summarise a much more personal reflection of his experience of his life growing up and living in Europe’s complex history and how that has influenced his life and work. It made me want to be in one of those large groups as he describes them and I was left feeling like I am missing out on so much that is going on in the world, feeling excluded, not being part of those thinking groups.

This book invites us into people’s lives that have been impacted by history, which is relevant to all of us in some way. My parents were children in WW11, a fact that has affected every day of my life. I grew up with my mum thinking I was part of a ‘lucky’ generation and then sometimes she would also say that when she was a child her generation were happier than mine. Reading this book makes me think about them both, sadly they have passed away now and all that rich history with them.

Regine Scholz applies psychodynamic thinking to the German “Welcoming Culture” and the WW11 feelings of guilt that played a part in the great helpfulness of 2015, when over a million refugees were welcomed into Germany. She writes about the impact that decision is having on Germany’s far right groups. This makes me think every decision Politicians make has an impact on our communities.

The weakness of the book is that it covers such a vast, complex and painful history. There are snapshots of such rich and interesting history and content that I want to know more, that between the general reflections, particular understanding and practical interventions it’s not enough. I’m left wanting more to digest and take in.  However, the book is a fascinating read if you are interested in the struggling current and turbulent climate that is affecting all our lives in some way.

Part three, on practical interventions, starts with the provocative thought process of what happens in the second and third generations of the families of perpetrators and asks: are they victims too?  Anyone who has worked in forensics will understand this in some way. It tackles a difficult thought process but a necessary one.

The following chapters gives vignettes from large groups.  The consideration taken when writing about the large group and the thoughtfulness in how the large groups had to be conducted. The written recordings of these historical groups shows there is something hopeful that there are people interested in coming together to think, remember and talk about the past, but not just the past but all aspects of the past and how history impacts all of us, the victims and the perpetrators and their families who carry the burden of the past in their matrixes.

If you are interested in the current political climate and the impact it has on individual people from different continents, the refugee crisis and how history keeps repeating itself repeatedly, this book needs to be read.  It is impossible to just live in groundhog day today, if you watch the news, or listen to the radio, read the newspapers or magazines there are stories of horror and torment and uncertainty that are affecting us all every day.

A Psychoanalytic and Socio-Cultural Exploitation of a Continent – Europe on the Couch is the beginning of a process that our international psychoanalytic and group analytic thinkers have a responsibility to continue, by making sense of our history and the impact our decisions have on us over time, we must remember and experience, lest we forget.

Our currently unstable society and the ever-deepening fear of where this uncertainty may lead, makes me wonder what would happen if all our European leaders were able to think in a large group with the ‘leavers’ and the ‘remainers’, the victims and perpetrators of our past, the privileged and the unprivileged .  Sadly, only those privileged have the opportunity to sit in a large group and think about our European communities. However, change is afoot and the people who do have groups to sit and think in, in our communities, are beginning to make choices through their actions by votes, referendums, protests, strikes, minority groups.  The people can only be pushed and pulled so far.  This book has only validated something I already felt, a deep sense of unease, distrust, sadness and fear.

Jacqueline Coombs
Group Work Practitioner
IGA Associate Member