Judit Szekacs-Weisz brings us a collection of her papers that she places into the context of her personal narrative, exposing the unknown and surprising alongside the familiar. She explores the many facets of survival, fairy tales, art, dreams, trauma, family secrets, memory, migration, and the lessons we learn from history. She opens our eyes to the experiences of the ‘foreigner’ learning about new cultures and languages and their exposure to otherness and shame. How working in a “second” language gives an acute sensitivity to the many layers of the spoken and written word. How fairy tales allow us to move between reality and fantasy to open up a deeper emotional and societal layer for exploration. How dreams open a door to our unconscious and wider society. How past generations impact on the present-day. The effects of migration, a topic that echoes ever stronger today. The book interweaves new and published papers with musings and reconnections to earlier ideas that take the reader on a journey through the past to the present and future. It helps build a rounded conception of reality at a time where it is harder to know what is real and what is not. The book is strengthened by a selected bibliography which features many authors not known in the “Western” professional discourse.
Six Degrees of Separation and Connectedness: Searching for Meaning in Living Society and Culture is the ideal book for those looking to gain greater understand of who we are, what shapes us, and how we connect to others.
Giselle Galdi, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, American Journal of Psychoanalysis –
‘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.’
Joan Raphael-Leff, PhD, (Retired) Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society –
‘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.’
Ken Robinson, from the Foreword –
‘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.’