ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses predominantly upon the re-exploration of a famous case of analysis: Vincent Binswanger’s analysis of Ellen West in Switzerland in early 1921. It explores the meaning of the incorporation of ‘culture’ into psychotherapy and ask in particular how this incorporation can be understood in terms of a wider context of changes occurring inside the discipline. The book discusses the adoption of particular models of ‘culture’ in the context of changes designed to bring psychotherapy training and practice under increasingly formalised structures of professional oversight. It looks at the role that cultural perspectives might have in helping to understand different generations of traumatised refugees arriving in the US. The book draws upon the anthropological work of Victor Turner, raising the possibility that the therapy room might be, to use Turner’s term, a ‘liminal space’.
