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My reflections on the experience of reviewing Guggenbühl-Craig's book proved interesting and rewarding. I approached the task with some trepidation having read on the cover: ‘this is a great book for curious big brains’. The psychological context, both individual and collective, proved particularly relevant because my reading of Chapter 5 ‘The blessings of violence’ took place on the morning of the tragedy at Dunblane, Scotland, where sixteen children and a teacher were murdered in their school. This unexplainable event brought the inevitable consequence of having to face unanswerable questions in both personal and professional life. The author's core message is that taking a ‘paradoxical approach to psychology’ and viewing topical questions ‘from the wrong side’ is essential to wholeness. Through our connection with society and humanity, tragedies face us with questions that move us on in the individuation process. There is a value in playing with the negative side of the ‘split archetypes’ although it is a disturbing experience which involves a greater understanding of the need to integrate our own shadow and our own capacity for evil. In the midst of a busy analytic practice, the book provided me with an important external reference point for exploring paradoxical questions and existential thoughts and feelings.
The book is structured around eight chapters and ends with a masterly commentary by Sidney Handel on Guggenbühl-Craig's work and thoughts. I found the simple style, translated from the German, readable but sometimes seductive in leading the reader gently into dark territory. In the introduction the author describes how it is in his nature to be both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of his profession, and reflects that there is something perverse and strange in taking up the paradoxical position. Chapter I, ‘Creativity, spontaneity and independence: three children of the devil’ explores the tendency to inflation in analytic practice and the importance of recognizing the god