Analysts in the Trenches invites the reader to peer into the experiences of a group of psychoanalysts who have “come out from behind the couch” to apply psychoanalytic ideas in the communities that lie on the other side of their consultation room doors. Its editors set out to portray how such community psychoanalysts utilize their psychotherapeutic knowledge and expertise to assist communities stricken by trauma and violence. In the book's introduction lies nothing other than a rallying cry for the psychoanalytically trained reader in the form of an idea borrowed from the mission statement of the American Psychoanalytic Association: “[P]sychoanalysts have a role and responsibility to address the complex issues and problems created by external reality.”

Unfurled amid this clarion call to arms are twelve essays portraying a range of thinking and experience related to community psychoanalysis in traumatic settings. The book is framed by opening and closing chapters