Hostile and Malignant Prejudice

Hostile and Malignant Prejudice: Psychoanalytic Approaches represents the leading edge of work in the field by members of the International Psychoanalytical Association's Committee on Prejudice (Including Anti-Semitism), psychoanalysts who hail from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Peru, Sweden, the United States, and Uruguay. It pursues the issues surrounding hostile and malignant prejudice as defined in the first chapter by Henri Parens, whose path-breaking work over four generations with children and their mothers uncovered the sources of aggression and prejudice on a scale from jocular slurs to murderous genocide. One chapter examines the effects of Latin America's colonial past on the psychic development of a 'mixed race' young man whose analysis implicates a major racial and social divide in the heart of his society. In another chapter we learn of the identity conflicts of children who were separated from their parents during the Holocaust and hidden or 'hidden in plain sight' by adopting a Christian persona. Other chapters examine the philosophical implications of the psychoanalytic approaches to hostile and malignant prejudice in human history, and the application of psychoanalysis to international relations. The various chapters and aproaches of the book take psychoanalysis to the borderline areas of anthropology, philosophy, politics, and sociology to illuminate and offer ways to understand and treat in a practical way one of the greatest scourges in human history.

Cyril Levitt was the chair of the Committee on Prejudice (Including Anti-Semitism) of the International Psychoanalytical Association, 2009-2013. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology at McMaster University, Canada, and is also a psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto.