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As the title indicates, this book is a proposal that a new theory of prejudice, a “relational” theory, can help in understanding the genesis of prejudice and, therefore, its reduction. The theory is relational in that it emphasizes the primacy of interpersonal relationships, especially early ones of infants with their caretakers, in explaining how prejudice develops.
The author draws from two seemingly disparate fields of study—psychoanalysis and social cognitive science (a sub-specialty within social psychology)—and demonstrates how combining the findings from both disciplines makes for a more robust theory. These two disciplines were apparently allied and conversant with each other in the 1940s and 1950s in an attempt to explain prejudice but then diverged in later decades with little communication between them on the subject.
Psychoanalysis became primarily concerned with intrapsychic dynamics and tended to explain prejudice intrapsychically. For example, one intrapsychic explanation of prejudice is that prejudice results from a displacement of hostile impulses away from a loved one toward someone less needed and less necessary. On the other hand, social cognitive science tends to examine the individual in relation to large groups in the environment. For example, two prominent explanatory concepts from social cognitive science are the ingroup and the outgroup. The ingroup is that group with which one identifies (i.e., “I am like them”) while the outgroup is composed of those not in the ingroup (i.e., “I am different from them”). Social cognitive science has tended to explain prejudice in terms of a demonstrative affinity for the ingroup and a demonstrative suspicion about and mistrust of the outgroup. Psychoanalysis has largely remained silent about these concepts.
However, as the author points out, psychoanalysis in recent decades has taken a decided turn toward the relational. That is, most influential psychoanalytic theorists presently de-emphasize intrapsychic p