Racism and anti-Semitism are highly complex human phenomena, having multiple causes including psychological ones. The latter are of paramount importance for understanding anti-Semitism. Over the past few decades, the focus of the psychoanalytic study of anti-Semitism has gradually shifted from the individual to the group. The earlier emphasis on unconscious individual defensive processes has been augmented by a new emphasis on the large group’s psychological processes – for example, its conscious and unconscious needs for identity, boundaries, allies – and enemies. Although, like social-science and human-science theories in general, psychoanalytic theories cannot be tested with the same rigor as natural-science theories, they can help illuminate such crucial human issues as war and peace, politics, racism, anti-Semitism, and genocide.
Click Here to Read: Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism by Avner Falk. From Jewish Political Studies Review 18:1-2, Spring 2006 .