Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern

This is a wonderfully lucid, accessible and profound book. Keval’s understanding of racist mindsets the ‘racist scene’ is, for him, a variant of the primal scene, saturating it with complex layers of meaning – brings clarity and depth to a topic that is easily bogged down in hatred or political correctness. This understanding, deployed with sensitivity and compassion in the face of racist phenomena in the consulting room and elsewhere, counteracts racism’s malignant power, restoring freedom – of thought and feeling – and authenticity. His voice is an eloquent riposte to the bigotry contained in Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, aimed as it was at the likes of him. It is a triumph of human compassion and reason over the forces of racialised hatred. The sensitivity and breadth of his clinical observations, and clarity of thought, make this book required reading for professionals working across boundaries of ethnicity in today’s multicultural world. —M. Fakhry Davids, Training and Supervising Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society, and author of Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference

This book examines aspects of racism and ethnic problems in individuals, organisations and societies and offers a theory about why we all have the potential to have prejudice against the Other. Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, in general, have not given the necessary attention to external events related to race and ethnicity. At the present time incredible advances in communication technology and global awareness are taking place while voluntary and forced migrations create major headaches and heartbreaks. I consider Keval’s book to be most helpful in increasing our interest and our ability to examine the psychology of how external and internal worlds intertwine. —Vamik D. Volkan, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Virginia, and the author of Psychoanalysis, International Relations, and Diplomacy: A Sourcebook on Large-Group Psychology