Freud never said that the Irish were impervious to psychoanalysis as suggested in The Departed. He would surely have never surrendered such fertile ground. Derek Scally’s book The Best Catholics in the World is a stunning study into what Kant called the crooked timber of humanity, from which no straight thing was ever made. Ireland’s humanity – or lack of it – is something that Ireland has often considered in an unreflective way. Ireland moved from being the best Catholics in the world to the best non-Catholics but both may have been dutifully done without much self-examination. Scally brings an…

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