Psychoanalytic accounts of racism reduce structural inequality to individual unconscious dynamics

Evidence

Although the two approaches yield radically different accounts of mental life they both operate a general reduction of the structural properties of social institutions and groups, to the psychological characteristics of the individual human subjects who inhabit them. From the point of view of constructing a theory of racism, one of the key effects of psychoanalytic reductionism is that positions of powerlessness, inequality, or exclusion are devalorized as instances of the real; instead they are treated as the site of unconscious projections or compensations drawing on fantasies of omnipotence, castration, or abandonment. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1275

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how theoretical framings erase structural/material causes (echoes Milgrom’s institutional analysis and the noise-silence material on structural vs. individual explanations). — connects to: Racialization recruits deep psychic structures of feeling, not only beliefs — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1241; 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; Racism subtypes each stem from distinct psychopathologies in psychoanalytic theory — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1295 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines psychoanalytic reductionism as a distinctive move: treating real powerlessness as mere projection.