ABSTRACT
"Race" and racism—and inquiries into whiteness and blackness—have hardly been issues of central concern in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. The reductive tendencies to which S. Freudian analysis has been especially prone are the result of a quite specific theoretical and practical assumption. The very idea of the collective as a dimension of the psyche, in this respect, a potentially invaluable contribution to psychoanalysis. Schools of social work in universities offer courses on "ethnocultural issues," "cultural sensitivity," "ethnic-minority concerns," and "oppression of diverse populations." The Jungian analyst Joseph L. Henderson has recently introduced the term "cultural unconscious." He situates the cultural unconscious topographically between what Jungian analysts call the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious. Historically, psychoanalysis has had a special interest in one variety of racism—and that is anti-Semitism. The advantage of the radial model is that it more accurately reflects the complexities of psychical reality than does either a topographical or an axial model.
