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This book is the final part of a trilogy on the subject of political morality, in the course of which Coline Covington brings together her vast experience not only of psychoanalysis but also of conflict resolution and group relations. Although a sober subject—a critique of the concept of collective guilt—it is written with characteristic style and panache as she creatively negotiates the difficult task of interweaving perspectives from the clinical setting, social research, historical studies, film and literature, and from the Judeo-Christian tradition from which secular concepts of guilt, responsibility and atonement largely derive. Giving examples from conflicts across the world ranging from the Balkans, Sierra Leonne, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Nazi Germany the spirit of the work is that of trying as best as possible to face reality rather than seeing things as we feel they should be, and of falling prey to the moralistic fallacy.
She begins with a brief personal account of moving as a child with her family from the deep south of America to New York City and thus having to relinquish her relationship with her beloved nanny Beulah. She recalls a pervasive homesickness, a sense of a lost Eden, of displacement and dislocation. She conveys the contrast between the complexities and contradictions of actual historical identifications, such as those connected to the legacy of the American Civil war, and the way in which public rituals of remembrance based on notions of guilt, atonement and restitution tends to offer a dichotomous view of good and bad, righteous and profane. The author's parents came from what had been slave-owning families. She comments that while they never voiced personal guilt they did, as lifelong campaigners for civil rights and racial equality, take responsibility—a distinction which is central to the book.
The author stresses the clinical importance of bearing witness, validating personal experience, helping the client put traumatic experience into word