Richard Koenigsberg’s The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism is a foundational work for the psychoanalytic study of culture and history.

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Koenigsberg examines the idea of the nation as a sacred object saturating our day-to-day reality. Through analysis of the writings of Hitler, Lenin, and others, he identifies core fantasies underlying the ideology of nationalism. What racists and revolutionaries have in common is belief that a particular class of people constitutes a "disease" within the body politic—that must be "removed" if the nation is to survive.

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Praise

“A truly bold and provocative treatise: The nation is seen as the symbolic embodiment of a communal narcissistic ego, cleansed of the 'badness' introduced by a particular class of people within a nation's boundaries whose 'removal' by whatever means is easily rationalized if goodness is to be restored. The interpretations are intriguing and illuminating, the scholarship creative and careful.”
   —Dan B. Thomas, Political Psychology (Journal).

“Koenigsberg identifies core phantasies underlying modern man's 'absolute faith in the reality of the nation.' According to nationalists' phantasy, one’s country is susceptible to disease, the source of which often is identified an alien class of people within the national body. The cure consists of an 'exorcism' that removes this group from within the decaying national body. Koenigsberg's argument possesses a relentlessly propositionally Euclidean quality. A remarkably sinewy work lays a secure foundation for future work.”
    —Howard F. Stein, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism

The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism

Richard A. Koenigsberg

Table of Contents

I. The Country, the Mother and Infantile Narcissism

1. Introduction
2. The Country as Suffering Mother
3. The Country as Omnipotent Mother
4. The Country as a Projection of Infantile Narcissism

II. The Country as a Living Organism

1. Racism and Revolution as a Wish to Eliminate the "Disease" from Within the
   Body of the Nation
2. The Disease Within the Nation as a Projection of Malignant Internal Objects

III. Revolution as a Struggle against Passivity

1. The Struggle Against Passivity: Hitler
2. The Struggle Against Passivity: Lenin
3. The Struggle Against Passivity: Aurobindo

IV. The Social Psychology of Nationalism

1. The "National Community"
2. Totalitarianism