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Coline Covington has a prolific and high-quality output in her writing that combines the social with the psychodynamic and the academic with the clinical. In this her latest book she continues the themes of her recent publication on the nature of everyday evil. In For Goodness Sake, we are immersed in an unusually and refreshingly broad ranging journey into the nature of human responsibility as illuminated by the deep cultural and political crisis in the West. This is a highly textured and carefully thought through piece of writing that examines the nature of bravery as illustrated partly by clinical work and partly by cultural commentary informed by both psychoanalysis and the social sciences. Writing the book is itself brave in its attempt to understand the contemporary world holistically through the lens of what it means to act ethically and take responsibility. Her examples are drawn from many walks of life, several different cultures and across significant periods of time. She shows us the nature of the inner human struggle to act courageously in conditions of extreme conflict and uncertainty. In this she does not flinch from political observation and controversy.
Covington makes a series of helpful links between bravery and ordinary things that people do, including the decision to go into therapy and the crises that emerge in therapeutic work that require major changes in value and direction in order that life can be lived differently. Her case vignettes are a real strength in this area and make accessible some of the issues of the struggle for identity, particularly when an old identity has broken down. This is evocatively imagined and described by the slow-motion drama of a therapeutic engagement. I would have liked more of a sense from her as to which of her own therapeutic interventions were ‘brave’. Maybe the practitioner cannot speak of this without sounding and being narcissistic. It is clear she identifies bravery in her patients and that maybe is enoug