ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how psychoanalytic thought and practice contribute to the understanding of raising children cross-culturally. I will further elaborate on the intersection of being a therapist from a different culture who makes an effort to understand the nuances of verbal and behavioral expression of the self, and how being a foreigner enhances and limits the psychoanalyst’s efforts to understand patients who are several generations American. I will describe how issues of cultural closeness and political animosity are approached, including finding parallels to the patient’s and therapist’s relational history. This cross-cultural affinity requires fine-tuning the interpretive effort by the parents to help each offspring develop a personal meaning to belonging to more than one culture.
