Psychoanalysis infers causality from mere association to yield absurd racism theories.
Evidence
So far so simple. It seems that we have located certain invariant (or at least frequently recurrent) psychological traits, which can be found strongly associated (if not statistically correlated) with certain invariant (or at least frequently recurrent) features of racist thought and practice. So, it can be safely concluded there must be a causal relation between the two. Starting from this fatal equation psychoanalysis goes one step further and claims that it can explain the causal link in terms of its own theory of individual or group psychodynamics. This gives us some of the most richly absurd theories of racism in the whole canon. For example, the equation of black people with feces or Jews with “dirty money” is explained in terms of anal sadistic fantasies on the part of people who have been too rigidly potty trained. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1301
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Racial imagery in psychic life is overdetermined and resists single-cause explanation — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1289; Psychoanalytic theories of racism have often been reductive and themselves racist — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297; Something intrinsic to psychoanalytic method generates misrecognition about race — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1264 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Psychoanalytic theories of racism have often been reductive and themselves racist
#expands(0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297 - Something intrinsic to psychoanalytic method generates misrecognition about race
#corroborates(0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1264 - A lazy psychoanalytic racism theory starts from established clinical constructs
#expands(0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1299 - Psychoanalytic accounts of racism displace rather than escape reductionism
#expands(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297