A Connecting Door

If you pick up David Millar's book, you will find it hard to put down. On the one hand it's a kind of detective story, reminiscent of Ferdinand Mount's brilliant Kiss Myself Goodbye. In this case the subject is not an aunt but himself; a boy from Birmingham born in the middle of the Second World War to a gents' tailor and outfitters assistant and the daughter of a shop keeper. It's about what happened to them, what happened to him, what happened all around him and what he did to himself. On the other hand, the boy, now a very experienced psychoanalyst, who writes the book looks back at himself to draw conclusions about fundamental matters in being human and alive in our era of excess and of breaking our planetary boundaries. Combining the personal and philosophical in an accessible way, Millar's book creates highly moving, intelligent and unusual analysis providing a powerful antidote to the modern politics of identity, "more more" and 'someone is to blame". For those who don't know how psychoanalysis has moved on, it will be a revelation. Millar uses his depth knowledge of the subject to offer a compelling set of ideas about how we might face and even survive the catastrophe we humans have been bringing on ourselves. -Professor David Tuckett. Emeritus Professor of Decision-Making, University College London (UCL), Senior Research Fellow, the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Distinguished Fellow, British Psychoanalytic Society.