At one or more times during our lives, most of us undergo a personal upheaval or crisis, which may or may not get resolved successfully through our making personal changes. Similarly, nations undergo national crises, which also may or may not get resolved successfully through national changes. There is a large body of research and anecdotal information, built up by therapists, about the resolution of personal crises. Could the resulting conclusions help us understand the resolution of national crises?

To illustrate personal and national crises, I’ll begin this book with two stories from my own life. It’s said that a child’s earliest datable firm memories are laid down from around the age of four years, although children also retain indistinct memories of earlier events. That generalization does apply to me, because the earliest memory that I can date is of Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire, which happened just after my fifth birthday. Although (fortunately) I was not at the fire myself, I experienced it second-hand through the frightening accounts of my physician father.

On November 28, 1942, a fire broke out and spread rapidly through an overcrowded Boston nightclub called Cocoanut Grove (the owner’s spelling), whose sole exit became blocked. A total of 492 people died, and hundreds of others were injured, by suffocation, smoke inhalation, or being trampled or burned (Plate 0.1). Boston physicians and hospitals were overwhelmed—not just by the wounded and dying victims of the fire itself, but also by the fire’s psychological victims: relatives, distraught that their husbands or wives or children or siblings had died in a horrible way; and the fire’s survivors, traumatized by guilt, because they had survived while hundreds of other guests had died. Until 10:15 P.M., their lives had been normal, and focused on celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a football game, and wartime leaves of soldiers. By 11:00 P.M., most of the victims were already dead, and the lives of their relatives and of the survivors were in crisis.