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In this book, Gabi Mann skillfully presents poignant clinical vignettes interwoven with the traumatic history of Israel including its present state of having been maliciously attacked by Hamas, engaged in a tragic war in Gaza, torn apart by profound social, religious, and political divisions, and, yet, still being a state that embodies spiritual hopefulness. The book tries to “see through the blindness” persons have about themselves and the other caused by narcissistic injuries either to personal selves or the group self. For Mann, the goal of therapy is to release patients from this narcissistic confinement and make available to them a more profound way to inhabit their humanity.
There are four important reasons for everyone, especially clinicians, to read this book. One is that, unlike most psychoanalytic writing, it masterfully situates psychoanalysis in a place and a time. Mann probes what it means to practice psychoanalytic therapy in a land that was birthed out of the Holocaust, which suffered the agonizing attack from Hamas on October 7, 2023, which is surrounded by hostile nations, and which harbors within it highly diverse populations. Israel’s haunting traumatic history has been passed down through generations, and the dangers, hostilities, and radical differences of the present are everywhere. Mann asks the poignant question of how can one practice psychoanalysis under such conditions. Brilliant question! A question about socio/political/historical situatedness that is not often asked in psychoanalytic books. The book as a whole is a comprehensive answer to this question.
The second reason to read this book is its complex understanding of the psychological difficulties experienced by persons living in contemporary Israel. For instance, we meet a conflicted father who wants Hamas destroyed but doesn’t want his son to be endangered in fighting, a religious conservative settler Jew seeing a left-oriented secularized therapist, a mother whose son leaves her to