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Six Degrees of Separation and Connectedness: Searching for Meaning in Living Society and Culture

Author(s) : Judit Szekacs-Weisz

Reviews and Endorsements

‘‘The felicitous title of this book emphasises major characteristics of Ferenczi’s work from 1897 to 1933: connectedness to outer and inner realities, and communication within both. Judit Szekacs-Weisz, an emigrant psychoanalyst, in her poetic language, incorporates lessons from history, the shadow of the Holocaust, the regime changes in Hungary, art, dreams, and rich clinical examples about owning one’s voice. This excellent, contemplative book opens hidden meanings about trauma, healing, identity, and the importance of cultural influences, and offers unique perspectives to the reader.’
Giselle Galdi, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, American Journal of Psychoanalysis

‘This book is an émigré’s bundle. It consists of both cherished items, and traces of what has been lost and left behind. Judit Szekacs-Weisz explores exilic questions of identity and assimilation; parallel testing of external and psychic reality. Failed attempts to rebuild continuity. Disturbing experiences of otherness and shame. An outcast’s inability to mourn loss of the original culture. Self-protective voicelessness among refugees whose mother tongue is “poisoned”. Toddler-like language acquisition, painfully reduced competence and social bewilderment when natural orientation is shattered, rendering basic assumptions obsolete. Some chapters focus on the decisive formative factors, collective psychological defences and particular strategies of survival among migrants from totalitarian states where the propagandised rewriting of history condemns whole nations and several generations to cumulative traumatisation of unprocessed transformations. Interwoven throughout the book are nuggets from the author’s experience as founder of a multilingual therapeutic organisation. She has a keen appreciation of the specific challenges faced by immigrant clinicians and patients alike when undertaking talking therapies in a foreign language.’
Joan Raphael-Leff, PhD, (Retired) Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society

‘To read Judit’s book is to be invited not just into a dialogue with its papers, but into the dialogue between them, as themes emerge, are elaborated upon, and cross-fertilise each other in an enriching hermeneutic circle.’
Ken Robinson, from the Foreword