ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to understand the efforts made by patients and professionals (whether psychoanalysts or psychiatrists) to understand each other in an attempt to accommodate to each other’s perceived voice. I will argue that patients adopt bureaucratic and psychiatric terms in order to decrease asymmetry and reorient the activity conducted between professional and client. On the other hand, professionals tend to consider social class, age, ethnicity or religion when adopting the patient’s voice in an attempt to decrease social distance. To patients, it is a way of decreasing asymmetry despite social distance by showing competence in the activity of medical consultation, indexing the highly valued voices of State institutions and psychiatric knowledge. To professionals, it is a strategy to achieve clinical goals by decreasing social distance but maintaining asymmetry. This analysis shows a reciprocal, solidary effort but, at the same time, prejudices and stereotypes which stand in the way of intercultural communication. Overall, the aim of this chapter is to show constructive efforts at building intercultural communicative practices in both their strengths and their weaknesses.
