Felix Brauner makes the concepts of modern, intersubjectivity-oriented psychoanalysis fruitful for social criticism by highlighting connections to current Critical Theory. To understand the identity formation of subjects in late modernity and its failures, he places the concept of mentalization at the forefront of his research. He applies the models of mentalization theory to the subject of xenophobia and analyzes the threatening consequences of an over-identification with one's ethnic or national in-group. In his comprehensive study, he demonstrates how a structurally lower development of emotional regulation and empathy skills in childhood and adolescence, as well as a dynamic susceptibility to regressions to pre-mentalizing modes of reflection in adulthood, can lead to xenophobia.