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In working at the review of this book, I read it through at least half a dozen times, and therein is a mixed message. Were it not a well worthwhile book I should not have spent the time on it. At the same time, some questions kept coming back to me which rereading did not quite satisfy.
I must confess that I am not entirely objective. I start from a tacit assumption that psychoanalysis has something useful to contribute to our understanding of long-running violent political conflicts, so this book already has my sympathy before I open it. The author starts out by arguing that the Arab-Israeli conflict is essentially not a rational matter. Most psychoanalysts would agree, though this is of course contrary to the view expressed by most of those who address the issue from a political, or some other psychological, point of view. His review of the literature is not very detailed, but he makes some useful points. He rightly, if rather promptly, disposes of suggestions that the roots of the problem are to be found in national characteristics or in the psychopathology of individual political leaders; he outlines the inadequacy of a rationalistic approach; and he notes the need to exercise care in applying individual psychoanalytic theory to the operation of groups. If the review chapter is relatively brief, the bibliography is enormous: at sixty pages it occupies almost a quarter of the book. Even then it does not include all the references in the text, but it is certainly a useful list for those who wish to take their reading further.
It is quickly clear that Falk feels passionately about his subject, but from the beginning he properly acknowledges that he and his fellow countrymen, like everyone else, are gripped by an emotional appreciation of “the facts” and often captured by phenomena characterized by the repetition compulsion. I found myself becoming a little uncomfortable when he called “absurd” the use of the terms Sephardic and Ashkenazi because of their psychologica