ABSTRACT
This chapter examines ethnicity and identity-formation in South Africa. It utilizes psychoanalytic theories of some pathological aspects of narcissism to interpret how ethnic identity is an attempt to defend the self against feelings of vulnerability and inferiority that are concealed by manifest aggressive and assertive social behaviour. The changes in official terminology in South Africa and the political terms used, illustrate how labelling both indicates and shapes social, political and economic practice. The term 'race' was still used in 1948 in National and United Parties' policy statements, and in 1956 in the Tomlinson Commission Report on the economic, social and political implementation of 'Race Separation'. Ethnic boundaries are therefore neither stable nor continuous, but fluctuate and change in response to shifting individual loyalties and identifications in changing political and social circumstances. The South African passive assent to many forms of 'collective mind' bedevils South Africa's politics, education and social and religious life.
