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During the last 6 years Vesa Manninen has published three psychoanalytical essay books, which all have been well received. His main, favorite theme has been masculine development and adult challenges of manhood. This also holds true of this latest book by him.
His approach is that of applied psychoanalysis - a well-established orientation introduced by Freud himself. This time the author has chosen as subjects of his analysis well-known masculine characters from Finnish literature; the author of Mein Kampf; and then a biblical character, namely Job. Abraham - in his intention to sacrifice his son - has also been the target of his analysis before. In his previous book, the author had sufficient courage to place even Jesus as the object of a critical psychoanalytic survey, awakening a faraway echo from David Strauss and Ernst Renen, famed for their non-religious interpretations of Jesus' life in the 18th century and also Albert Schweitzer, whose medical dissertation dealt with Jesus' personality from a psychiatric point of view.
The characters of a poem of a great Finnish poet, Eino Leino - called Ylermi and Job of the Bible - are introduced as examples of two different means with which a person can maintain selfhood under real and factual, not inner, tyranny. Both are subjected by the tyrant to the gradual loss of everything valuable in their life. The solution for Ylermi is defiance to the end, which does not bend even in the face of death. Ylermi remains a winner, in the inner sense, although he loses his life.
Job goes further and asks for the motives of the tyrant, that is, God. This is in principle a narcissistic hurt to God, who does not accept independence.