Description
Book SynopsisToday sees the rise of nationalism, the return of totalitarian parties in Europe to electoral success, and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacists in the US. Thus, there is urgency for psychoanalysts, with their understanding of cruelty, sadomasochism, perversion, and other mental mechanisms, to speak out. Jonathan Sklar has risen to the challenge with this timely, thought-provoking, and, at times, upsetting work. Dark Times starts with a look at European history in terms of monuments and mourning, before moving into storytelling and the elision of thought and history at this current time, including harrowing detail of the brutalities inflicted by ISIS on the Yazidi, and concludes with a meditation on the relationship between cruelty in the early environment and hatred of the other within society, with particular focus on racism in the US.
Sklar goes against the grain of brief sound bites, which are an aid to quickly pass over painful knowledge. Instead, he goes into detail to give extremely dark, horrid occurrences, and the human beings on the receiving end, respect and understanding, which enables the reader greater access to allowing unconscious things to be made more conscious, highlighting the quality of humanity in human beings. Also, listening to these stories enables us to become more aware, not only of what is going on over there, but also what is happening here, because in our increasingly joined-up world, here is always implicated and affected too.
By ridding ourselves of the illusions of our political times, we can find greater freedom to think, develop, challenge, and create hope, for the future of our children and our grandchildren, as well as for ourselves. Dark Times is a timely, thought-provoking, and, at times, upsetting work that is a must- read for all those looking for a deeper understanding of today’s world.
Trade ReviewNormalising Nazis is one example of a populist attack on thinking that psychoanalyst Jonathan Sklar highlights in his vital new book… Acknowledging human cruelty is hard but, like this book, should not be avoided. An important read.
-- Rachael Mckeown, Psychodynamic Counsellor * Sussex Counselling & Psychotherapy News, Spring 2019 *
Lucid, powerful, intelligent, and deeply relevant for the days of our times: a vastly thoughtful and important book.
-- Philippe Sands, Professor of Law at University College London, author of ‘East West Street’
Ranging contrapuntally over such themes as alterity, memory, trauma, and racism, Dark Times is a vitally important volume that illuminates the increasingly menacing horizons of our shared social and political life. In an age in which psychological quick-fixes such as cognitive behavioural therapy and psychopharmacology proliferate, Jonathan Sklar reminds us of the irreducibility of psychoanalysis in helping to secure the internal conditions for freedom and emancipation, and therefore in resisting tendencies towards what Hannah Arendt called 'total domination'.
-- Samir Gandesha, Associate Professor of Humanities and Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada
'emotionally and intellectually engaging […] a remarkable experience of a book, committed not only to a visceral practice of psychoanalysis, but also a deeply practical one. In these dark times, more works like Sklar’s are urgently needed.'
-- Eddy Carrillo – The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 90:3
‘Stir[s] up the fitfully applied, but urgently needed, subdiscipline of political psychoanalysis […] To work free of revenge is an ongoing work and, essentially, I think the essays in 'Dark Times' are a reflection on this imaginative task.’
-- Steven Groarke, 'The International Journal of Psychoanalysis', 101:3, 2020
Table of ContentsPreface
About the author
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Europe in dark times: some dynamics in alterity and prejudice
Thinking on the border: memory and trauma in society
Cruelty in the early environment and its relationship with racism
Epilogue
References
Index
