Psychoanalytic theories of racism have often been reductive and themselves racist

Evidence

All these examples show, however, is that in making these correlations Freudianism has not so much overcome its reductionism as diversified its effects. So how does it come about that a theory which so radically “deconstructs” the myth of the unitary subject in the clinical setting should operate with such an integrationist model of self and society when it comes to generalize its findings? To understand this turnabout we have to look at the intellectual division of labor between the various branches of the human sciences, and in particular the special relationship that psychoanalysis has come to entertain with sociology (Craib, 1998). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297

Whichever instance is taken as axiomatic (and this varies), the items in column B are invariably treated as secondary, symptomatic, or even epiphenomenal, while the items in column A are regarded as primary in terms of causation and/or meaning. The aim of the analytic work is to uncover the workings of Set A in and through Set B, and then to map B back onto A in order to recover from the social items their true (i.e., psychological) significance or explanation. This procedure is therefore intrinsically reductive, and the reduction takes two main forms: Set B is explained as the effect and Set A as the cause (libido theory and ego psychology); Set B is interpreted as a site of symbolic displacement and Set A as a locus of symbolic condensation (Kleinian object relations theory and Lacanian discourse theory). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1274

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as a new postfascist and postimperial world order began to dawn in the West along with the Cold War against communism, a new discipline developed in the USA aiming to provide a rational scientific basis upon which the forces of unreason in society could be combated, and the world made safe for democracy. The foundations for a social psychology of prejudice were laid by Gordon Allport’s The Nature of Prejudice (1954), a project designed from the outset to eliminate the need for a special theory of the unconscious and a specific theory of racism. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1315

In principle then psychoanalysis should have a lot to contribute. In practice it has been a different story. Key psychoanalytic assumptions about the nature of mental and emotional life and its interaction with social, cultural, and political orders have been used to generate arguments about the causes, effects, and meaning of racism which are often absurdly reductive, demonstrably false, and even highly racist in their implication. In so far as these difficulties have not been addressed or overcome they continue to be seized on by those who have their own reasons to discredit the psychoanalytic enterprise. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1244

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does psychoanalysis, radical about the unitary subject in the clinic, slide into integrationist models of society? The division of intellectual labor with sociology is a thread worth chasing.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox of clinical deconstruction versus social-integrationist generalization is genuinely subtle and worth sitting with.
• DEFINE: Distinguishes psychological reduction as effect-cause (libido/ego) vs. symbolic displacement-condensation (Kleinian/Lacanian) — a crisp taxonomy.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno and Horkheimer’s psychoanalytic reductive readings of fascism; also to the general problem of explaining social phenomena via individual psychology. — connects to: Race is psychoanalysis’s constitutive but disavowed foundation — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1402; Psychoanalytic theories read racism as unconscious projection onto blacks, not as response to them. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1282; 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 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297; David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1274; David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1315 (+1 more)