Psychoanalytic theory can justify contradictory characterizations of the same nation

Evidence

Psychoanalytically oriented theorists demonstrated that the Japanese national character was oral (Spitzer, 1947), and anal (LaBarre, 1945), and phallic (Silberpfennig, 1945), illustrating the protean quality, at once admirable and worrisome, of psychoanalytic theory. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 344

Categorization

• CANDY: Three psychoanalysts each ‘proved’ the Japanese national character was a different oral/anal/phallic stage — a fun, compact absurdity for a cocktail conversation.
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”