ABSTRACT
In a world over which the mushroom cloud of the hydrogen bomb casts its ominous shadow, it becomes increasingly imperative for man to reexamine even his most cherished concepts when they touch upon the urgent question of peaceful relations between nations. This chapter discusses the concepts of nationalism and of internationalism to psychodynamic scrutiny to shed some light on their relationship to personality development. A particularly virulent expression of this kind of reaction is that of the extreme ultranationalist. The ability to perceive and evaluate the actions and motives of other nations as well as one’s own without ethnocentric distortions can be viewed, in most instances, as a reflection of emotional maturity on the part of the individual.
