INTERVIEWS

Apartheid came to existence in South Africa in 1948, but the segregation laws between black and white had been effective already from the beginning of the 20th century. On February 11, 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison. This date is considered the end of Apartheid. On May 09, 1994 Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. But from 1948 to 1990 the racial conflict touched points of tremendous violence. In the past 20 years South Africa has been trying to become effectively the Rainbow Country. Psychoanalysis is developing in that country, and now South Africa has the first Psychoanalytical Study Group in Africa, inside the International Psychoanalytical Association. How is it possible for the new generations of Psychoanalysts to face the history of their country? What does it mean to be born in a place where the racial segregation was so hard ? And now, what are the consequences of all that? Derek Hook introduces very important research on the themes of Apartheid and post Apartheid from a Psychoanalytical and Psychosocial point of view.

 Ashis Nandy (born in 1937 in Bihar into a Bengali family) is a major figure of contemporary Indian critical thought. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of cultural and post-colonial studies in the Subcontinent and his prolific works have, for the most part, been published by Oxford India. His book, The Intimate Enemy. Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism – published in 1983 and translated into French, German and Italian –, represents a turning point in Post-Colonial studies. It builds on the idea (put forward by Octave Mannoni in 1947) of an internalization of the colonial complex by the colonized and the colonizer, and offers a subtle investigation of the dialectical movements brought about by such an interdependency.

Long-time head of the influential Centre for Studies of Developing Societies in New Delhi, Nandy is a clinical psychologist who likes to call himself a "political psychologist" and who constantly applies psychoanalysis to the unconscious dimensions of mass-culture in India and Southern Asia.