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Monica Luci has written a generous, thought-provoking and dense book we should all read and ponder in these dark times. It is generous in its sheer range of ideas explained and explored. It is thought-provoking because of the times we live in, which this book speaks to and from. It is dense as Luci covers a whole range of topics and links psychological, group and cultural ideas in order to understand a brutal subject - torture. This is a book that one needs to return to on a regular basis in our clinical careers as a reminder of the importance of the work we do and where we sit as subjects with an individual and collective history.
Luci tells us that the book emerged out of her work with patients who had experienced torture and who had an alienating effect on her. The horror evoked either avoidance or fascination but Luci found herself pre-occupied with the why of torture rather than the how, which we generally disavow as belonging to a far-off place historically or currently, not to do with our current lives. Luci therefore embarked on understanding why it happens and what does it mean from a psycho-social perspective?
The book begins by defining torture in International Law and the various renditions of this legally. Luci then goes on to look at societies in which torture appears, concentrating on the importance of the State. This is followed by looking at the actors who enable torture to happen, whom she calls bystanders, and then at the tortured and survivors of such experiences. Having surveyed this general field, she then develops a psychoanalytical understanding of torture and applies this to States and bystanders. The final chapters look at the implications for human rights and the discourses around justifications for torture and repair.
Torture is defined as the infliction of pain and suffering, mainly on the body, by the State, for the purpose of producing a ‘truth’, which confirms the State's legitimacy. This ‘truth’ is therefore somethin