Danse Macabre and Other Stories

A wonderful book offering depth insights into the dynamics of a troubled world. It reveals how psychological and social forces dance unconsciously together, shaping the emotions and thinking which impact on our collective lives. Whether working with individuals, or working to change organisations and wider society, the learning from this deeply thoughtful book will be profound. A must-read for all who desire to ‘create the good society’.

– Simon Western, CEO of Analytic-Network Coaching and Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin

A book that demonstrates how psychoanalytically informed thinking can throw light on such issues as immigration, political leadership, climate change, colonisation, and globalisation. Moreover, interspersed through the chapters are stories that illustrate the more personal impacts of these global events, bringing such concerns home to us all.

– Professor Susan Long, Director of Research at the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia and associate of the Tavistock Institute

Together with a number of great colleagues, Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee bring a wealth of experience and thought to the telling of stories with meaning, purpose, and insight. This is an excellent and intriguing volume, and I thoroughly recommend it.

– Professor Mark Stein, Chair in Leadership and Management, University of Leicester, UK

Psychodynamic experts and scientists Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee offer precious unconscious assumptions about recent social, religious, and political phenomena in a variety of countries. By exploring the fight between Eros and Thanatos in society, where social defences, disappearing containers, splitting, threats on identity, perverse leaders, and vulnerability play a major role, they meaningfully follow Freud’s attempt to explore clinically our world and possibly give way to a better form of civilisation.

– Gilles Amado, Dr Psych, Emeritus Professor of Psychosociology (HEC Paris), founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations

The book is a hard but rewarding read. Its scope is vast, and the writers’ knowledge about global politics and history is impressive.

– Melanie Kinross, counsellor and supervisor – Therapy Today Nov 2021

Halina Brunning is a chartered clinical psychologist, freelance organisational consultant, and accredited executive coach. She has published extensively on clinical and organisational issues, and edited several books for Karnac including Executive Coaching: Systems-Psychodynamic Perspective (2006), translated into Italian in 2009. Between 2010 and 2014 she conceived of and edited a trilogy of books, which analyses the contemporary world through a psychoanalytic lens: “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on a Turbulent World”.

Olya Khaleelee is a corporate psychologist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and organisational consultant with a particular interest in leadership, organisational transition, and transformation. She has been associated with the Tavistock Institute for over 30 years in developing group relations both in the UK and abroad, and was the first female director of the Leicester Conference, which explores authority, leadership and organisation from a psychoanalytic and systemic perspective. She was chairwoman of the London Centre for Psychotherapy (now part of British Psychotherapy Foundation) and for many years was director of OPUS: Organisation for Promoting the Understanding of Society, applying a psychoanalytic and systemic approach to understanding the societal processes that give rise to conflict and division. She has published extensively in the areas of leadership, including psychological assessment of senior executives and on system psychodynamics in the organisation and beyond, into society.