Multicultural Imagination: "Race", Color, and the Unconscious

Psychoanalysis has tended to ignore the importance of "race" within the unconscious. In The Multicultural Imagination Michael Vannoy Adams investigates the deep-seated, unconscious origins and effects of racism or "colorism" and argues that "race" is as important as any other aspect of the unconscious. The author presents case material from patients for whom "race" or color is a significant social and political concern which impacts on them personally. In the therapeutic dialogue and in dreams, these patients struggle to establish an effective individual identity in relation to whatever collective "racial" identity may have been either imposed on them or adopted by them. The Multicultural Imagination challenges the essentialist view that restricts all individuals to this kind of collective identity. The book uses various analytic perspectives in both the Freudian and Jungian traditions to cover topics such as "whiteness" and "blackness, " the "cultural unconscious, " the "civilized" and the "primitive." Focusing on Jung's visits to Africa and his nightmares about the color complex of whites and blacks, Michael Vannoy Adams offers a re-reading of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious - one that includes cultural differences. With reference to the work of Frantz Fanon and Alice Walker, the author shows how questions about universal, human principles have continued to inform thinking about "race." This book exposes the unconscious attitudes that have stood in the way of an authentically multicultural imagination. It encourages psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to recognize the importance of "race" or color within the unconscious and will interest those working in other fields,including cultural studies and "racial" and ethnic studies.