The term prejudice alludes to a judgement that precedes experience and corresponds to Kant's (1781) a priori. Prejudice organizes and discriminates the events and facts we must assess in understanding our surrounding world. It brings together each subject's beliefs, values, and frames of reference. Prejudice precedes individual judgement. The subject is born into a world of words and concepts, and a network of meanings and values that define what is accepted and rejected by her family and society. For that reason, prejudice is indispensable for thinking. It helps protect self-definition and self-boundaries, and prejudices are consciously and unconsciously transmitted from one generation (Blanck-Cereijido, 2014).


The question of discrimination pertains to both the individual psyche and the social imaginary. Each society constitutes itself with its values, concepts of justice, logic, and aesthetics. That constitution implicitly renders the Others' inferiority as the flip side of one's own asserted truth. From there, it is a short distance to attributing to the Other a perverse and evil essence.


Prejudice is complex and needs to be studied from multiple perspectives. From a psychological perspective prejudice can ruin our quality of life, but from a biological perspective it may have some advantageous aspects. That is the object of this book which consists of chapters by prestigious professionals in psychoanalysis, sociology, biology, and the law.