The first impression that this might be a novel, a creative literary narrative, is deceptive. This slim volume contains far too much reality, i.e. painful self-knowledge, and is more like an intimate diary with a framing story – perhaps to maintain at least some distance.

The story is quickly told: a psychoanalyst (Stefan) learns through a difficult patient (who does not want his name to be revealed and calls himself Mr A.), who suffers from an obsessive love relationship with a woman (Mrs X), which he describes as sometimes real and sometimes fictitious, to relax his own problems with women and to become more holistic. In doing so, he provocatively questions well-known psychological therapies and borrows from outside the ‚monastery walls‘ of orthodox teaching, for example in reflections on art, Zen Buddhism and anthropology. For this reason, a conventional ‚review‘ of the book is hardly appropriate, and I want to use long quotations ‚for the benefit and edification of the reader‘, to give them food for thought. This is where I see the importance of the book.

I would like to present and translate the first long quotation from the field of anthropology: It is the account of a local social worker from Rwanda who tells of his experiences with Western psychologists: «We had a lot of problems with the Western psychologists who came here immediately after the genocide. We had to ask them to leave. They had a method of treatment that didn’t involve sitting outside in the sun, which makes you feel better straight away. There was no music, no drums to dance to – nothing to get the blood flowing again. There was no understanding that everyone had taken the day off so that the whole village community could come together to revive the spirit and give joy. They also refused to acknowledge that our grief had come from the outside, and that it was something that could be driven out from the inside. Instead, they called everyone one by one into stuffy little rooms and made them sit for about an hour and talk about the terrible things they had experienced. We just had to ask them to leave.

Writing is about questioning ingrained patterns and holding up a mirror to yourself. Of course, this is not always fun because we always want to choose one or the other. Here is another quote:

I need to think more about polarities. Problems arise when we choose one pole over the other. We then feel guilty towards the disadvantaged pole. The secret is to learn to accept both poles and to move freely between them. But it is never easy to accept the losing side.

Another piece of advice: ‚I should not rely only on sharp definitions, because if I ever want to trust my heart and build up my intuition and sensitivity, I have to practice relaxed openness and acceptance. We go in search of our grain of sand, but only to let it go. Forget who we are and just trust. (A koan by Marc Melchert from the preface of the book: Go into the desert. Look for the special grain of sand that you are. When you have found the right one, let it go quickly).

Another example from the kaleidoscope of thought fragments contained in the book.

You hate any kind of conflict and you do everything you can to avoid it. You want to ally yourself with the light and deny the dark. You see unity as something good and separation as something bad. But if you avoid the bad, you also agree to live without the good. You are afraid of commitment because you are afraid of separation. But these are the classic polarities, the proverbial two sides of the same coin.

Another fundamental consideration of the main character (Stefan) in this ’novel‘.

Normal actions will never be enough to satisfy our longing for acceptance. We must find a balance between the extremes. We have no chance of survival if we eliminate the conflict that necessarily arises from our contradictions. A balance must be struck between holding on and letting go (attachment/autonomy). We only increase the importance of the tension that arises when we want both things at the same time. Attachment is the mother of all conflicts in our relationships. We need to learn our lessons here, but we don’t want to do it lightly. To achieve a balance between attachment and autonomy we have to conquer our super-ego, but our ego won’t help us. The substance that unites the two extremes is life experience‘.

And finally: ‚Awareness and mindfulness have a spiritual dimension to the traditional path of self-knowledge. It teaches us that once we become aware of the interconnectedness of all things, the self can be placed in a larger space of cause and effect. The aim is to help us reduce our excessive sense of self-importance.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that one of the authors of the book, the psychotherapist Marc Melchert, talks about psychosomatics in the first volume of Octagon to be published.