Celia Brickman's masterpiece, Race In Psychoanalysis, is one of only a handful of books that I would describe as having profoundly changed the way I think about Freud and the development of psychoanalysis...Brickman's book will remain a classic and generations of analysts will need to study it to understand and reconceptualize the most fundamental assumptions and tenets of psychoanalysis...-from the foreword by Lewis Aron, Ph.D., Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis.
Brickman's remarkably innovative work turns the lens of post-colonial theory on the unconscious racial assumptions of psychoanalysis, offering a new and radical take on the central tension in Freud's thoughts between valorizing and undermining the idea of the civilized world. Erudite, lucid and compelling, Race in Psychoanalysis is a timely argument for transforming psychoanalysis into a genuinely critical theory of the repudiation of the Other. It should be read by all students of psychoanalysis as well as everyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis and its contribution to modern thought.-Jessica Benjamin, author of Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third.
In Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in the Mind, Celia Brickman illuminates the manner in which our colonialist and enslaving past continues to reverberate within the construction of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Taking a thoughtful and detailed tour through the history of Freud's relationship with the sociopolitical forces within Europe during his time, Brickman chronicles the various iterations of the use of the darkened masses as timeless and primitive. Illuminating the way race and racialized object relations permeate our canonical texts, her perspective is a wonderful new resource to locate pathways to a multicultural, racial, and ethnically diverse discourse within theory construction and training in psychoanalysis.The pitfalls and paradoxes concerning race that are embedded within the field become points of access for those perceived as other, not-white, and different from whiteness to become psychoanalysts. Brickman points to the lived psychodynamics of racialization as the way to further Freud's wish that his project be for the people.-Annie Lee Jones, Ph.D., clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst, member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak.
Celia Brickman's masterpiece, Race In Psychoanalysis, is one of only a handful of books that I would describe as having profoundly changed the way I think about Freud and the development of psychoanalysis...Brickman's book will remain a classic and generations of analysts will need to study it to understand and reconceptualize the most fundamental assumptions and tenets of psychoanalysis...
Lewis Aron, Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis.
Brickman's remarkably innovative work turns the lens of post-colonial theory on the unconscious racial assumptions of psychoanalysis, offering a new and radical take on the central tension in Freud's thoughts between valorizing and undermining the idea of the civilized world. Erudite, lucid and compelling, Race in Psychoanalysis is a timely argument for transforming psychoanalysis into a genuinely critical theory of the repudiation of the Other. It should be read by all students of psychoanalysis as well as everyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis and its contribution to modern thought.
Jessica Benjamin, author of Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third.
In Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in the Mind, Celia Brickman illuminates the manner in which our colonialist and enslaving past continues to reverberate within the construction of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Taking a thoughtful and detailed tour through the history of Freud's relationship with the sociopolitical forces within Europe during his time, Brickman chronicles the various iterations of the use of the darkened masses as timeless and primitive. Illuminating the way race and racialized object relations permeate our canonical texts, her perspective is a wonderful new resource to locate pathways to a multicultural, racial, and ethnically diverse discourse within theory construction and training in psychoanalysis.The pitfalls and paradoxes concerning race that are embedded within the field become points of access for those perceived as other, not-white, and different from whiteness to become psychoanalysts. Brickman points to the lived psychodynamics of racialization as the way to further Freud's wish that his project be for the people.
Annie Lee Jones, clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst, member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak.
Equipped with a mastery of post-colonial theory, critical race theory, feminist critique and theories from religious studies, as well as a sophisticated understanding of psychoanalytic theory, Ms Brickman offers us a radical perspective on Freud's meta-psychological, cultural and clinical thought. Ms Brickman offers cogent summaries of Freud's writings and extrapolates numerous examples from a vast body of clinical and cultural texts demonstrating a deep familiarity with his oeuvre.
Romy A. Reading is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in individual psychological treatment for adults and adolescents. To read this review in full, please see the following: Reading, R. A. (2021) Race in psychoanalysis: aboriginal populations in the mind: by Celia Brickman, New York, Routledge, 2018, 234 pp., GBP25.89, ISBN: 9781138749399. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 102:642-645