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Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee's new book is a very precious and courageous one on a variety of levels.
First of all, it takes the risk of applying psychoanalytic knowledge to the wider scene in order to try and make sense of some global political and societal phenomena. Even though Freud himself and many of his successors followed such a path, we all know that it is a difficult task.
By the way, the content of the book goes beyond “a psychoanalytic perspective on global dynamics”, its subtitle. Indeed, as they mention in their preface, the authors use “a combination of group relations approach with a psychoanalytic and open systems perspective”, and this is likely to prevent a superficial veneering of psychoanalytic concepts and theories on social events, a frequent occurrence.
Second, its form is original. Each chapter addresses a specific macrosocial theme that is “currently a preoccupation in contemporary society and beyond”, a reason for the reader to get involved in such thinking. By calling each of the chapters “stories”, the authors probably wanted to avoid the debate about the scientific dimension of their work (even if it is a rigorous one), preferring to allow for a subjective aspect within their analysis. Maybe the ongoing discussion between the authors throughout the preparation of their book (initiated through a dream that Halina Brunning had in Poland) gave rise to the way Richard Morgan-Jones, in his rich introduction, qualified this book: “intersubjective and circular in its exploration of the dynamics of society”.
One of the strengths of this book is that each of the chapter stories is followed by a story within the story written by an invited contributor, which offers another angle and an additional depth to the initial story, a project the authors call “an extended storytelling exercise” (p. xx).
Third, the book is articulated around a very elaborate matrix, a sort of meta-framework, detailed early on (chapter one), that presents the various faces