Prejudice as Ideology: The Creation of “Us” and “Them” Groups in Society (and Psychoanalysis)

Abstract

Prejudices are never experienced as prejudice: they always seem reasonable. Forms of multiculturalism presume that we are prone to prejudice when we are faced with strangers whose ways and looks we are unfamiliar with. They think that one can be taught to think and experience differently though a process of familiarization and education. This work takes place in the conscious realm. Psychoanalysis, meanwhile, provides a range of explanations that have their sources in the workings of the internal worlds of individuals. The main culprit here is the mechanism of projection. To this way of thinking, the antidote to prejudice is greater self‐knowledge and a better understanding of one's internal world. This work is grounded in the unconscious realm. While each of these discourses has its merits, neither explanation is sufficient in itself. I think that this is because neither gives sufficient weight to the way power relations structure psyche as well as social context. I will argue that an understanding of the human condition grounded in the works of S. H. Foulkes, Norbert Elias and Donald Winnicott provides us with a deeper way of grasping the workings of prejudice. Finally, I will use these ways of thinking to draw attention to, and think about, the forms of prejudice (and the rationales that bolster them) to which the world of psychoanalysis is prone.