Makari has led the Institute toward diversifying its programming to include explorations of the arts, mental health policy, the mind sciences, and the humanities.

Specifically, Makari declares that early psychoanalytic theory emerged from Sigmund Freud's engagements with French psychopathology, biophysics, psychophysics, and sexology.

Accordingly, he writes, Freudian theory was essentially a synthesis, one which quickly drew interest from Freud's contemporaries, many of whom coalesced around him and in the process developed the first psychoanalytic community.

According to Makari, the period that followed the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 saw a series of schisms, both theoretical and interpersonal, which shattered the Freudian movement and forced early analysts to rethink their work and professional networks.

These communities placed less emphasis on Freud's personal authority and theories, and instead sought to bind their members with a commitment to shared technique, increased empiricism, and a process of professionalization.

Makari investigates the evolution of xenophobia and considers how political commentators, philosophers, social scientists, and psychologists have attempted to account for the hatred of strangers.

He discusses xenophobia alongside Western nationalism, mass migration, genocide, and colonialism, and offers an account of its international resurgence in the twenty-first century.

Author Thomas Chatterton Williams reviewed the book in The New York Times, describing it as "riveting" and "a meditation on a subject that has vexed human society at least since the dawn of consciousness".