Why psychoanalysis, Mr. Josaphat?
Psychiatrist Matteos Josafat responds to Vicki Flessa
ed. Armos, p. 342

He had a vision of Greece. Whether he succeeded, history will show.

I picked up Matthew Jehoshaphat’s latest book a few days before I received the call announcing his death. I knew about his illness, which worsened in the last year, but no one fully understands that the illness can crush and defeat such a living person as the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Matthew Josaphat. No one can imagine or even accept that his spirit was lost, that the feeling that all of us, his students, as well as his patients and all who knew him from a negative or positive side, experienced when entering his clinic in Kolonaki, has now evaporated . . Because the reality is that whether you loved this person or you did not like him, he remains a person who has gone through thousands of lives and created his own personal imprint. And this can only be done by a truly lively and generous person.

Autumn would have to come to start a discussion of the book of Jehoshaphat with journalist Vicki Flessa. The reader probably knows what to expect from this book. After all, B. Flessa several times invited him to a program on state television called “At the Ends”, and the sympathy that arose between them after these programs is quite expected. Readers owe this book to her, rather, as to her own desire for this discussion to take place and conclude. Perhaps it was not an easy task and it took the journalist a long time to complete it, as she mentions in the book. He was nearly released and the psychiatrist was unable to see him while he was alive. This, obviously, gives special value to the book in question, its vitality is the last trace that has been preserved on its pages.

Jehoshaphat in all his books had the gift of a living language. The two previous ones, published by the Armos publishing house, are the material of his speeches and discussions, mostly taken from speeches that a well-known psychoanalyst gave for several years at the Theocharakis Foundation. The convention of translating oral speech into written language has the following important advantage, especially after his death. You read them and it’s like listening to it. He has always had this gift for his personal style in conversation, idiosyncratic humor and self-deprecation, even when talking about traumatic events, that manages to bring you so close to the experience that you are no longer afraid of it.

What did Matthew Jehoshaphat always care about? Family of course. As for the journalist Vicki Flessa herself, who is a woman, a mother, a partner, a part of modern Greek life? The two married in a 33-chapter thread of discussion where Matthew Josaphat’s personal life is intertwined with the social, changing Greece, as well as the cultural and, above all, the mental. Matthew Jehoshaphat, through his background and years spent in Greece and England, covers much of modern history. Before him there was psychoanalysis in Greece, but in essence the first serious attempts of Kouretas-Zavitsanos-Empirikos unfortunately did not bear fruit and many years had to pass, until the very last decade of the 70s and especially the 80s, before it was done again more the serious efforts of great personalities such as Alexandri, Giannakoulas, Sakellaropoulos, Tsiantis, Yosafat and others, so that we can discuss psychoanalysis in Greece, companies, institutions, society and our clinical offices constantly and consistently.

In the book, Jehoshaphat relives 80 years of his childhood, his relationship with his mother, siblings, his life in England, starting a family, and his scientific and social vision of Greece. Matthew Jehoshaphat had a vision of Greece. Whether he succeeded, history will show. However, today this does not prevent us from loving him and being grateful to him for the path that he opened for all of us young people. After all, the book is already meeting its reader. In his memory!