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Good books are called page turners; this one is not such a book. Instead, it is one of those rare works that make you stop and wonder, stop and think while reading. In the process of exploring his subject, Jan Borowicz offers a master class in cultural analysis that draws on broad cultural thought as well as a solid grasp of contemporary Freudian analytic thought. In addition, with its serious broad Western philosophical thought—its index starting with Adorno and ending with Zizik—together with a keen sense of both classical and relational psychoanalytic thinking—
its index including not only Freud but also Gerson,1 Green, Klein, and Laub among many others—Borowicz achieves both uncommon depth and breadth.
Furthermore, all of this is eminently readable. Indeed, his personal original asides along the way also provoke reflection, e.g., his aperçu that the difference between kitsch and perversion is that kitsch evokes emotions to later cool them down, while perversion stimulates emotions but provides no real solution.
I start in terms of context because the work itself is a significant act of unfolding history, indeed an actualization of psychoanalytic inquiry contributing to the progress of civilization struggling to tame barbarity.
On the social level, it is a sign of a culture’s forward movement in mastering its own cruelly aggressive path, a problem universal rather than unique to Poland, as our news at home reminds us each day.
On the personal level, I found myself deeply touched by the author’s grasp and honesty about the antisemitism woven throughout Poland’s history, akin to racism here in America. His determined, humane openness, one that accepts the inevitability of the consequences of history even as he confronts and examines them, evoked and demanded more of my own efforts to master my culturally determined hate. Having grown up in an immigrant Jewish community in America during and after the second world war, I was raised with severe antipathy to