The Imaginary Australia is in no way 'responding' to the 'sense of political crisis and social division generated by One Nation'. One Nation arose around 1996, and The Imaginary Australian took two decades to write. I soon found that sharper focus, central to The Imaginary Australian , in the work of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Curthoys states that I assume an 'imminent' loss of social cohesion but produce 'no evidence' to support such imminence. I make no such assumption.
Racism is a further fragmenting force.
In developing a Klein-based theory about racism which begins by defining racist beliefs as 'akin to psychotic states of mind', I argue that an overall decline in cohesion helps potentiate such states into social reality. In Australia, Anglo-Australia is one major influence working against such fragmentation, one guarantor of social cohesion. Curthoys contends that I see it as the only guarantor. Such elision helps explain the feelings of attachment which ordinary people hold for the nation. Curthoys finds it 'disturbing' that, on my visits to the city, I experienced not only 'real pleasure' in ethnic diversity but also 'prickles of shock, even traces of fear'.