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With this slim volume, Mikael Enckell continues his analyses from his previous book: Själen som vägrade krympa (The Soul That Wouldn't Shrink)-discussed in this journal (2003) and reviewed in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis .
The present book consists of nine essays, of which only some will be discussed here.
As in his previous papers, Mikael Enckell is engaged in the Jewish element in literature, culture and in psychoanalysis. He points out the hidden influences of Jewish thought and tradition on Western civilisation and simultaneously he traces the roots to the negative or ambivalent attitudes to Jews and Jewish culture.
In the first essay, Enckell demonstrates how anti-Semitism once more is on the rise both overtly and covertly. In this and in the following chapters, Enckell illustrates how covert anti-Semitism has been part of Western culture for the past two thousand years, how it provided a breeding ground for the Holocaust and how it now provides a basis for the predominantly anti-Israeli attitude in the media by holding all Jews responsible for the Israeli government's politics.
In a later section, Enckell writes that “we have been much too quick to rid ourselves of religion”. This has triggered a deficiency that has to do with its nature as reflections of the inner reality within which we live. We have thus become alienated from the religiously influenced patterns of ideas.
On the other side, Enckell points out that among young people there is nowadays a growing interest in religion and mysticism. Enckell gives two examples of fundamental parts of our thinking which are based on the “revelation on Sinai”: First of all, God is still indescribable and infinite, second is the perception that one's neighbour is just as we are(p. 27).
Enckell also describes a number of issues of the Jewish religion and traditions, which he claims have formed the basis of psychoanalysis: the commandment to commemorate, the wealth of details (“God lives in the detail”), the