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Helen Morgan's book, "The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective," explores the inner workings of white racism from a psychoanalytic standpoint. Morgan argues that the defensive process of disavowal is crucial in understanding racism, particularly of the "liberal" kind. She highlights the difficulty white individuals face in acknowledging their internal racism and suggests that the psychoanalytic field has been resistant to change on the race front. The book raises questions about dialogue and recognition between white and black individuals and calls for a deeper understanding of racism within psychoanalysis. [Extracted from the article]

This paper contributes to the current debate about decolonisation by rethinking the theoretical base of psychotherapy. It offers, first, a reformulation of the problem of human suffering that draws on the concept of alienation as detailed in the works of Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, and Erich Fromm. Second, it presents an alternative reading of Wulf Sachs' psychoanalytic text, Black Hamlet, as viewed through the prism of alienation theory. And third, while affirming the significance of that classic work for psychotherapists today as well as the salience of alienation theory, the paper raises complex questions about the integration of Marxism and psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]