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Michael Vannoy Adams' personal experiences have nurtured a creative awareness of multiculturalism. Though this thought-provoking book is based on multicultural life in America, the issues are also relevant to multicultural life in Britain. Adams works in private practice as a psychotherapist, defining himself as a pluralist, respecting all the schools of psychoanalytic thought, but declaring an interest in Jungian analysis. The author is also a senior lecturer in psychoanalytic studies at the New School for Social Research, in New York.
Generally, Adams' book is about, ‘race, color, and the unconscious and the prospects for a multicultural psychoanalysis’. His specific interest is in the collective dimensions of, what he defines as, projective typifications (i.e. stereotypical projections ‘as they appear both consciously and unconsciously in the personal experience of the individual’).
Adams guides us confidently through psychoanalytic explorations of race and racism, illustrating his thoughts with research from a range of academic and artistic disciplines, such as history, sociology, anthropology, biology, literature, films and the performing arts. The author's inclusion of ideas from other disciplines accords with my own thinking on the subject. In particular, race and racism are powerful group phenomena, and hence would appear to benefit from a multi-theoretical dialogue, in order to analyse more fully and understand their various processes and effects.
The book is written in a fresh, engaging manner, and is divided into three main sections: historical, theoretical and clinical. There are fifteen chapters with interesting titles which captivate the imagination and encourage one to read.