Małgorzata Opoczyńska's book is a mythos extending between the Author's questions: "Do you remember? Tell me" and "Do you remember? I do." It is a unique mosaic story composed of small fragments of life, varying in color, structure, and texture, of those who have been touched by life in various ways. It is a polyphonic narrative about the meanders of the compulsion to repeat life, something of life, thus dwelling in an existential cocoon (who hasn't found themselves in it at least one time). I would also describe it as a mythos, a wise parable about those meanders and the time each of us passes through. Am I passing away? This is one of the questions, which I will call philosophical and thus primary, asked by humans endlessly. The Author, asking: "Why must it be this way?", that everything that has been experienced and that is being lived repeats itself, provides an answer, frequently heard in the statements of the heroes of this book, and thus of Herself: "everything repeats, repeats to last differently than before" (p. 257). It repeats so that what repeats and is repeated does not pass away, even once more in pain as well as in ecstasy – towards someone and something that has been, but also towards who and what would be next? (…). 
The Author's writing style is both personal and unique, unmistakable, standing out among canonical academic texts, and essentially positioned beyond them. Her writing is an artistic response to Krystian Lupa's postulate: "write yourselves." This writing is her very own, making it trustworthy – worthy of her and inspiring faith in the dignity of what and how she has written (...). I highlight the Author's unique writing style also because I am captivated by its poetic quality – the reader encounters it from the very first page of the book, for even the table of contents is a poem. The composition of the book, which I find exceptionally intriguing and exquisite, breaks the conventions of academic writing. And this is a significant value of the book, because to reach – as the phenomenology of life suggests – the essence of something from life that repeats beyond the passing away principle, it was necessary to use a language that brings to light the mythos of those who stood up to the Author. Has the Author written the book also "to finish [it] as best as possible" (words of Bernhard quoted by the Author on page 122)? I do not know. But I know how she has finished it. She competed it with her poem – poetry, which is abundant on the pages of this book. And poetry speaks, without adjudicating... In this, I see the Author's respect for those whose mythos were evoked and recalled to be heard and who are not alone – they meet on the main paths of this book. 
 
Małgorzata Opoczyńska's book "Beyond the Principle of Passing Away. A Study on the Repetition Compulsion" is an erudite work, competently rooted in various cultural texts, enriching the Author's presentation and making it unique. There is no analogous or similar publication on the Polish market and, I believe, the global market, both in terms of its content and the style of the work. I place the book within the transdisciplinary humanistic discourse, one of whose goals is what is particularly close to the Author – reaching, through various paths, the still not fully revealed, and thus protecting itself from dogmatism, truth about humans in their multidimensional, uncertain, fragile existence in time, in which their place is found. It is a significant contribution to understanding the humanities beyond disciplinary divisions, where the constantly renewed questions about who humans become, with the presence of others – those closer and those farther – are more important than providing answers that claim, at leastm to be accurate. 
 
(Excerpt from a review by Prof. Anna Walczak, Ph.D., University of Łódź)