Uprooted Minds: A Social Psychoanalysis for Precarious Times

In the second edition of Uprooted Minds, Hollander offers a unique social psychoanalytic exploration of our increasingly destabilized political environment, augmented by her research into the previously untold history of psychoanalytic engagement in the challenging social issues of our times.Often akin to a political thriller, Hollander’s social psychoanalytic analysis of the devastating effects of group trauma is illuminated through testimonials by U.S. and South American psychoanalysts who have survived the vicissitudes of their countries’ authoritarian political regimes and destabilizing economic crises. Hollander encourages reflections about our experience as social/psychological subjects through her elaboration of the reciprocal impact of social power, hegemonic ideology, large group dynamics and unconscious processes. Her epilogue, written a decade after the first edition of Uprooted Minds, extends its themes to the present period, arguing for a decolonial psychoanalysis that addresses coloniality and white supremacy as the latent forces responsible for our deepening political crises and environmental catastrophe. She shows how the progressive psychoanalytic activism she depicts in the book that was on the margins of the profession has in the last decade moved increasingly to the centre of psychoanalytic theory and praxis.This book will prove essential for those at work or interested in the fields of psychoanalysis, politics, economics, globalization and history.

About the Author

Nancy Caro Hollander is professor emerita of history and a research psychoanalyst in private practice in Oakland, CA. A faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, she is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker and former producer and host of "Just a Minute" for Pacifica Radio. Author of five books, she is published widely in national and international journals.