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Einstein once asked Freud whether there was any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war, hoping that Freud would be able to “bring the light of [his] far-reaching knowledge of man's instinctive life to bear upon this problem…. You, I am convinced, will be able to suggest educated methods, lying more or less outside the scope of politics, which will eliminate these obstacles” (Freud, 1932). Jones (1957, p. 187) remarked that Freud himself, though not enthusiastic about his own response, surmised:
It may not be Utopian to hope that these factors, the cultural attitude and the justified dread of the consequences of a future war, may result within a measurable time to putting an end to the waging of war…. By what paths or by what side-track this will come about we cannot guess. But one thing we can say: whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war.
Volkan's remarkable book lights the beacon illuminating the path leading to a “strengthening of our intellect.” It is an exploratory venture into the world of political science, an application of psychoanalytic thinking to the inner world of man and his motives for making war and peace.
The book deals with five important points: (1) The consequences of identifying ourselves with “our kind of people” and being “alienated” from the other kind; (2) man's psychological need to have both enemies and allies in the political as well as social sense and the impact of that need, which arises from ethnicity, nationalism, and global politics; (3) the fact that human beings do indeed “need enemies” in the sense that many events in the child's development can initiate prejudice, first on the individual level