ABSTRACT
In cross-cultural therapeutic dyads, little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, assuming sameness when only similarities exist. What the analyst needs is not a detailed knowledge of the patient’s culture but a serious questioning and awareness of the assumptions underlying his own that is the culture he was born into and culture in which he has been professionally socialized as a psychoanalyst. The chapter suggests that for optimal psychotherapy with patients from different cultures, what a psychoanalytical therapist needs is not an exhaustive knowledge of the patient’s culture but a reflective openness to and interrogation of his own cultural origins. Psychoanalysis in a language that is not patient’s own is often in danger of leading to “operational thinking,” that is, verbal expressions lacking associational links with feelings, symbols, and memories. Most analysts have followed George Deveraux’s lead in maintaining that all those who seek help from a psychoanalyst have in common many fundamental and universal components in their personality structure.
