The United Nations story in the Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn vehicle, the Interpreter, hinges on an African saying about the two ways humans can resolve grief. The movie is irrelevant to this, as it’s a bit of a mess, but it clearly got the saying from some kind of interesting cultural source. The point of it is that, if someone close to you is killed, you can go down one of two paths: either you seek to avenge the killing, or you save a life – preferably that of the killer. So, the tribal response was to tie up the murderer and drop him in the river. The bereaved family can let the murderer drown, and thus receive the satisfaction of seeing justice done. But then they will never be free of grief. Or they can save the life of the murderer. There will be no justice, but there will be acceptance.

Something in this sounds psychologically plausible. But, more interestingly, it illustrates the way in which people have long grappled with resolutions or ‘solutions’ to the pains of living. The question is whether the professionalisation of therapy is a powerful lightning rod for the best of emotional resolutions learned through real experience, or whether it drains real life into a less fertile arena, narrowing resolutions to a small professional arena. Which analysts can manage the realm of vengeance and forgiveness, without reducing it to relations with a parent, or the rethinking of a traumatic encounter through positive visualisations?