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The author expresses opinion on the psychoanalytic construct of "the psychic uses of the ethnic other" as a way of understanding the features of anti-Muslim prejudice in the U.S. and its implications on U.S.-Middle East policy. She analyzes the roots of U.S. anti-Muslim prejudice which it claims to have sprung from White racist cultural tradition in the U.S. and the prominence of Christianity. She explains how the September 11, 2001 terrorism attacks in the U.S. raised antagonism against Arabs and Muslims.

The article discusses the influence of socioeconomic and ideological factors on the psychological reactions to the terror of the September 11 attack. The article argues that the public response to the terrorist attacks is paradoxical as they were experienced as cataclysmic and causes the shocking loss of innocent lives. On the other hand, the attacks could also be seen as a relief from the deepening division among individuals in the U.S. that seemed to disappear in the wake of the shared pain, terror and loss.

This paper, written by a Latin American historian and psychoanalyst, accounts for the factors responsible for current United States foreign policy, which is contributing to the intensification rather than the amelioration of dangerous political and military tensions throughout the world. It offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the growing contradictions in United States class society that represent the context for the particular ways that the traumatic events of 9/11 were experienced by citizens and used by the Bush administration in its manipulation of the public's fears and anxieties for its own ideological ends. It shows how primitive mental states among both leaders and citizens have profoundly thwarted the ability of the country to sustain democracy and national security at home or to fashion a strategy to diminish antagonisms toward the world's only superpower. The author analyses the history of exploitative United States attitudes and policies toward Latin America as the backdrop for assessing the prevailing critical views throughout the subcontinent of the United States 'war on terror', which is seen in part as the continuation of the drive to expand geopolitical and military control throughout the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]