Nation, subject and psyche: the psychological construction of nationalism

Abstract

The main objective of the research has been to explore the close, complex and understudied relationship between the sciences of the mind and the political doctrine of nationalism, between the academic languages of the psyche and the ideological voices of the Nation. With this aim, we have traced the multiple imprints of psychological language in the academic literature on nationalism produced in the past one and half centuries, from the first contributions of the psychology of peoples and the studies on the national character, to degenerationist psychiatry, the psychology of the masses or multitudes, the social psychology of prejudice and psychoanalysis. Although psychology has often claimed to be a discipline ultimately capable of explaining the adhesion of individuals to the Nation or the passion that nationalism stirs in mass followings, our objective here has been to present the languages of psychology as part of the ideological accounts or discourses that have contributed to the social and cultural construction of nations and nationalisms.