Editor's Column: Psychoanalysis and Racism

As the twenty-first century approaches, one of the greatest problems confronting humanity is racism, which afflicts every continent and virtually every country on our planet. The pervasiveness, persistence, and recent resurgence of racism throughout the world make it a phenomenon that anyone concerned with social justice or human welfare must attempt to combat. This is a fortiori the case for an organization like APCS, whose purpose is to use psychoanalysis to promote beneficial social change. The challenge for us is to find ways to use psychoanalysis to help prevent or reduce racism.

Today, many people have dismissed the possibility that psychoanalysis might make a substantial contribution to the reduction of racism. One reason for this skepticism is a general disillusionment with psychoanalysis since the first half of this century, when it seemed to many people to offer a fairly simple, if somewhat arduous, solution for both psychological and social problems. But a more substantive reason is the growing recognition that 1) racism comes in multiple forms, some of which are functions of social structures and institutions and thus appear to have no significant psychological roots, and that 2) even old-fashioned racial prejudice and hatred, which are clearly psychological phenomena, appear to be caused in large part by certain social, political, and economic conditions, intervention in which, it is therefore reasonably assumed, would be a much more effective way to reduce racism than would attempts to alter the subjectivities of large numbers of people.

Empirical research has demonstrated strong correlations between racism and socio-economic factors. A number of studies have shown, for example, that lower socio-economic status correlates more strongly with racism in South Africa than do those personality traits labeled “authoritarianism,” which some researchers had previously taken to be the major cause of racism and other prejudices