ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to protect against the cultural essentialism and subsequent objectification of the other; it is helpful to deconstruct the category differences between relationship, sub-culture, and culture. The gradual realization of cross-cultural error was much needed, allowing a revival of curiosity, a rebalancing of knowing with not-knowing, and, eventually, some recognition and progress. The chapter argues that otherness is not the problem, but unacknowledged assumptions of sameness drawn from a lifetime of relational–cultural inter subjective experiences stored largely out of awareness. It explores the key to understanding the different outcome in the two vignettes is that the intersubjective therapeutic encounter takes place at both conscious and non-conscious levels. The therapeutic encounter depends on whether a feasible new transitional attachment can be made from the intermingling of relational–cultural subjectivities of family members and therapist. The infant develops a sense of what is emotionally acceptable and unacceptable to the care-giver, co-constructing the range of what feels right and what feels wrong.
