Interestingly, one of its core postulates is that the essential sociality of us all, or the universal human impulse to relate to others. In so far as we are relationship-seeking beings, then, what is the connective tissue that actually binds people together, that gives effect to this relational striving? In contrast to the popular belief that knowledge precedes action, I argue that emotions are what prompt and sustain human interactions - and not emotions in the conventional sense, of private feeling states stored inside our heads, each with its own unique biochemical correlate. I regard emotions, instead, as intersubjective phenomena that can be said to exist between people. How else does one explain being moved by a piece of music, a spellbinding movie or a superb novel, if not that some mysterious element - an emotion - has connected to the heart of the composer, the director or the author to the heart of the listener, the watcher or the reader?

Accordingly, the chapter explains why the sick behaviour of individuals can be a reflection not of chemical imbalances or dysfunctional childhoods, but of the degree of sickness prevailing in any given society. It argues further that the negation of universal human needs such as creativity, sociality and autonomy generates alienation in its technical sense, giving rise in turn to all manner of relational disturbances. The chapter maintains that the cultivation of hope, which, like all other emotions can be approached intersubjectively, depends on our capacity for recognising and responding to the psychological and material needs of our fellow South Africans.

What is of immediate interest to me as a psychotherapist is that the dominant political trend of our time - identity politics - is profoundly psychological, being organised around the injured dignity of oppressed groups. Each group, that is, claims a misattunement between a felt group identity and an outer world that rejects it. For proponents of identity politics, therefore, the problem of dignity turns on a society that is pathologically invalidating. Human beings are first and foremost social beings, and when social formations compromise the dignity of marginalised groups as a matter of routine, the consequences are devastating, involving either self-hating shame or envious resentment.

This wound we call ‘apartheid’ will continue to be picked at compulsively. In both mind and practice, empathy has its limits; the relational pathologies of shame, envy and impasse are here to stay. The shame-filled violence, the envious value delusions and the ambivalent-avoidant attachments will persist long after we are gone. No matter the reparative attempts: there is a brokenness at the heart of our nation that cannot be wished away. If one considers the matter at the level of the individual, when the parent, teacher, or psychotherapist succeeds in providing optimal conditions for empathetic connection with a child, student or patient, it is hardly unusual for the latter to collapse the frame with enactments derived from still-active complexes.

At my best, I see psychotherapy in the same light. Many people who come to therapy are disgusted with themselves for one reason or another, much as the Buddha was in his own time and in his own way. This disgust can take many forms: shame, fear, anxiety, or feelings of unworthiness are common expressions of it, but the possibilities are endless. Some people even develop what is called a “reaction formation” and seem the opposite of disgusted. They come across as prideful or conceited and unwilling to admit their faults or self-doubts. But these individuals are often just propping themselves up, creating a false front to mask their vulnerabilities, and somewhere inside they are troubled because they know they are not being real.