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In a period characterized by the rise of nationalism and the return of totalitarian parties in many parts of the world, Europe included, the title Dark times, chosen by Jonathan Sklar for his new book, is intentionally evocative of the alarming similarity between “the political, economic, and social developments of the present and those of 1930s Europe, including the rise of totalitarianism and fascism” (p. xvi). In this darkening world, can psychoanalysts pursue individual freedom in their consulting rooms, ignoring the echoes of hostility toward vulnerable groups and the massive attack on alterity in society? Can we think about trauma in the individual without thinking of it in generational terms? Does not prejudice rely on stereotypes of otherness that pass down the generations like unprocessed childhood trauma? What value could psychoanalysis have if the psychoanalytic community could not face the difficulties of the mourning of historical traumas? These are some of the questions raised by the author, who resolutely believes that “there is an urgency for psychoanalysts to speak out.”
This urgency is well illustrated by the following episode. In March 2018, the European Psychoanalytic Federation (FEP) met in Warsaw at the time when the Polish government was bringing in legislation to criminalize any assertion of Polish involvement in the Holocaust. Many preferred not to attend; others felt the opposite. Near the end of the conference, a large discussion group of about one hundred analyst spoke their thoughts. Memories of the destroyed ghetto and of the horrors written on the tombstones of the old Jewish cemetery were evoked in a tense atmosphere.
Sklar spoke of his great concern about the rise of totalitarianism states of mind in governments in Europe, the USA, and elsewhere, stressing the need to draw attention to how the mental states that analysts work with in their consulting rooms, such as cruelty, sadomasochism, perversion, and identification with the aggress