How can universal theories of human nature be based in white racism, or even more ridiculously, white supremacism? Given that Freud declared that all human beings by nature are prejudiced, including being racists regardless of one’s skin color—yes, non-whites are racist too—that is, no one gets a free pass on being racist on some level, he probably would not be surprised that whitey becomes the emotional whipping post in contemporary culture as an act of displacement.
In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud underscores the universality of racism:
“Every time two families become connected by marriage, each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth than the other. Of two neighbouring towns each is the other’s most jealous rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt. Closely related races keep one another at arm’s length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon the Scot, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese. We are no longer astonished that greater differences should lead to an almost insuperable repugnance, such as the gallic people for the German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the white races for the coloured” (p. 101). Continue reading Critique of psychoanalytical institutes by Jon Mills
Click Here to Read: Milton, Freud, and My Cousin Hymie: I found in Paradise Lost an unexpected affinity among its author, the psychoanalyst, and myself. What the anti-Semite Ezra Pound called the poet’s “beastly hebraism” held the key. by Joe Moshenska on the New York Review of Books website on November 9, 2021.
