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This book, co-authored by Christopher Scanlon and John Adlam, is one of the latest additions to the esteemed New International Library of Group Analysis collection (NILGA). The authors provide a courageous and revolutionary review of the social, political, racial, and ecological crises facing human civilisation. They use a rich set of perspectives—psychoanalysis, philosophy, and sociology amongst them—focusing on violence and power relations between in-groups and out-groups in our society. Scanlon and Adlam are consultant psychotherapists in forensic settings as well as group analysts, who draw upon the wealth of several decades of work between them including during the Covid-19 pandemic which served only to further expose these globally challenging issues.
One of the first things I was drawn to was the enigmatic and ostensibly outdated picture on the front cover of the book which depicts the legendary meeting in ancient Corinth of Alexander, King of Macedonia (garbed in robes), with Diogenes, the vagrant street philosopher, whose house is a barrel on the street. Alexander approaches Diogenes and asks if there is anything he can do for him. Diogenes replies that Alexander is blocking out the sun and requests that he move out of the way. In so doing, Diogenes informs the king that he, Alexander, is part of the problem. This meeting speaks to the paradoxical fact that a powerful in-group who offers help may do so at the expense of the powerless out-group. There is a power differential when a king offers help to a homeless man, and Diogenes turns him away. The authors use this to shed light on the ambivalence of patients who exhibit hostility towards “help” (as perceived by the in-group).
The authors use this iconic encounter as a theoretical base for what they call the “Diogenes paradigm” and divide the book into three parts. In part one the authors explore what it is to be an excluded member of society; to be “unhoused” in the metaphorical (psychological) and literal (