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Why, back in the fifteenth century, did the Lancastrians hate the Yorkists? Why did the Nazis murder the Jews? And why today, in the twenty-first century, do the Republicans loathe the Democrats? Indeed, why on earth do most human beings despise those whom we regard as strangers?
Although we have no shortage of data about the widespread fear and hatred of people considered to be foreign—a phenomenon known as xenophobia—very few scholars or mental health professionals have explored this universal, toxic state of mind, which has caused much grief and trauma across the ages. Thankfully, the forward-thinking clinician and historian, Professor George Makari, has recently published a supremely well-researched and highly insightful tome about the origins of xenophobia in its many forms, which provides much-needed engagement and clarity.
Professor Makari will be well known to fellow psychological practitioners. A noted psychoanalyst in New York City, New York, Makari serves as Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University and, also, as Director of the famous DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy, and the Arts—an interdisciplinary research centre which champions the medical humanities and investigates the history of mental health. A lucid and perceptive public intellectual, Makari previously produced such landmark books as Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis and, also, Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind.
In the prologue of his highly engaging new book, Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia, Makari introduces readers to this subject by describing his own family history, explaining how his Lebanese ancestors struggled to reinvent themselves as Americans, and how, even during his own childhood years, fellow schoolmates would still make fun of his mother for speaking in a so-called strange, overseas accent. Hence, Makari conveys with great empathy and sincerity the challenge of having begun l