¹Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Correspondence: R D Hinshelwood, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. E-mail: rhinsh@essex.ac.uk

Abstract

I take racism to be a typical example of a social phenomenon of intolerance and prejudice. It is also a state of the mind of an individual. This paper will explore the relation between intolerant attitudes such as racism on one hand, and, on the other, states of mind that are felt to be intolerable. As racist attitudes impact on the individual, what exactly in the individual do they impact upon? And how in turn do they recreate social groups characterized by that species of intolerance? I shall present clinical material to demonstrate the existence of a connection between these two phenomena, intolerance and the intolerable. Two forms of this identification – a rigid permanent form and a more flexible form – are identified from two psychoanalytic cases briefly described.