Victor Hugo meets Sigmund Freud (or, rather, S.H. Foulkes) in this engaging group analytic account of the French Revolution. Psychiatrist Harold Behr describes a lifelong interest in this period of history, beginning in his South African childhood and developed by devouring biographies of Maximilien Robespierre, ‘the idealist turned monster’. He experienced a growing awareness of controversies and contradictions at the heart of the history and ‘decided that the only way to unmuddle myself was to pull a few clinical tricks out of the psychiatrist's bag and examine some of the dramatis personae of the Revolution as if they were patients. This would force me into empathic mode by investigating their backgrounds, rooting around in their childhoods and doing my level best to see the Revolution as they might have seen it’ (pp. vii–viii).

The book introduces the major characters – Louis XVI, Robespierre and Georges Jacques Danton – and examines their personal history, motivations and role in the Revolution, devoting one chapter to each: ‘The Scapegoat King’, ‘The Mind of the Fanatic’ and ‘The Passionate Opportunist’. The rest of the book is then organised thematically, covering groups, violence, leadership, paranoia and myth. This structure means that there is some repetition of historical events. However, despite this and the chronology provided at the start of the book, I found it rather difficult to keep the whole story of the revolution in mind. The episode which most sticks in my memory is the failed escape in 1791 by Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their family from house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The king – who would be executed as a tyrant 18 months later – was so relaxed about his flight that he excitedly traced the route on his map and – in a rather touching, childlike manner – waved to ‘his people’ from the carriage.

Zhou Enlai's circumspection that it is ‘too soon to say’ what the significance of the French Revolution is has been widely quoted and Behr does not resist the opportunity to follow suit. This interesting book has stimulated me to think more about groups and leaders, which can only be a good thing – but who knows if we will ever fully understand the significance of the times in which we live?