The Merchant of Venice contains some of the most powerful depictions of Jewish–Christian relations in an era when Christian antisemitism dominated European life. It is one of the most difficult plays for Jews to watch: not only for Shylock’s torment at the treatment he is subjected to, particularly in the Christian characters’ relentless contempt for him, but for the depiction of his gradual descent into violent revenge, as a result of which he himself is crushed. The revenge part of Shylock’s speech is crucial. The anti-Semites in the play unconsciously fear their victim, especially after treating Shylock with cruelty and contempt. The racists then project hatred, consequently fearing that Shylock will hate them, that he will be filled with rage and seek a revenge even more cruel than that which has been perpetrated upon him. Shylock speaks the racist’s fear and then wants to carry it out. In Shakespeare’s play, Shylock becomes a justification for hatred. If we look at this as the unconscious of antisemitism, then Shakespeare is personifying this unconscious in the character of Shylock. Seen in this way, The Merchant of Venice is a dramatic depiction of the violent effects of antisemitism on the subjectivity and identity of both victims and perpetrators. We know that racism creates trauma. Sue Lieberman’s work on transmitted trauma (Lieberman, 2015) and Earl Hopper’s work on massification and aggregation both explored unprocessed trauma (Hopper, 2003). However, the permeating trauma of both racism and antisemitism has festered without being addressed adequately. Our purpose in this article is to begin to look at this disturbing truth. We will address the historical relationship between antisemitism and racism. We will make links to the development of psychoanalysis and group analysis. That Foulkes, himself was a victim of racism has always been present but largely unspoken. Unspoken, it has created blind spots, including our own racism.

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Malcolm Pines, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, group analyst. Successful in all these professions and others will detail how influential he was. In addition he wrote many papers, still regularly used and quoted, often as a dialogue with himself and his readers. He was not a man to profess his knowledge but always a man, both as a writer and a person, in dialogue with himself and others.I knew Malcolm for about 35 years as a member of one of his therapy groups, as a teacher when I was training and as a supervisor after I qualified. At one time, he and I fell out but his openness to discuss what had happened from his point of view helped. It was never resolved but time passed and I felt that as his family accepted him, and as I increasingly saw him as a man of his times who had certainly been punished, I could no longer hold what had happened against him and other, warmer feelings returned. Thus, together with David Glyn and Pam Kleinot we conducted an interview with Malcolm in 2016 to acknowledge both his personal contribution to group analysis and also to further understand the historical context within which group analysis developed. It can be viewed on the GASi website.The unexpected youngest of three, born to parents who had emigrated from Russia in 1921, first to Belgium where his father's stepmother lived and then on to the UK in 1923, where there were better career opportunities for him as a medical consultant. They had emigrated because as a medic both the red and white guards wanted to recruit Malcolm's father, a dangerous position to be in. His class position as an educated Jew was also precarious at this time.

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