From Psycho-Analysis to Culture-Analysis

A Within-Culture Psychotherapy

M. Dwairy

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781349681099
  9781137407924
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137407931
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología clínica

This book confronts the barriers that face the cross-cultural application of western psychotherapy. It puts forward an argument for applying culture analysis, in which the therapist analyses the inconsistencies within the client's culture, before applying psychoanalysis, in which the analyst analyses the intra-psychic conflicts.

1

Culture and Psychology

In the past few decades, an increasing amount of attention has been paid to the relationship between culture and psychology, and a new domain of cross-cultural psychology has emerged to address the relativity of psychology and to study psychological differences across cultures. Today, most psychology curricula at universities include courses such as multicultural psychology, cross-cultural counseling, and culturally sensitive counseling and psychotherapy. All address the unique psychologies of people belonging to African, Asian, Latino, or other non-Western cultures, who constitute about 80% of the Earth’s population.

Marcella (2013) offered the following definition of culture:

Shared learned meanings and behaviors transmitted across generations within social activity contexts for purposes of promoting individual/societal adaptation, adjustment, growth, and development. Culture has both external (i.e., artifacts, roles, activity contexts, institutions) and internal (i.e., values, beliefs, attitudes, activity contexts, patterns of consciousness, personality styles, epistemology) representations. The shared meanings and behaviors are subject to continuous change and modification in response to changing internal and external circumstances. Cultures can arise and function in brief and immediate temporal settings (e.g., [the] culture of faculty meetings) and also long-term settings (e.g., ethno-cultural ways of life). (p. 6)

This definition emphasizes that cultures construct our realities. Marcella postulated that our psychology is shaped and formed in cultural contexts and that cultures represent “templates” through which we construct and understand the world around us.

It is not by chance that the seeds of psychology as we know it today were planted in the 19th century in the midst of the era of individualism in Europe. This era emerged as a result of the social, political, economic, and cultural development that had taken place in Europe and North America in the previous two centuries. Industrialization, capitalism, democracy, and the foundation of the national states created a climate that allowed the emergence of individualism. Before these critical developments, the inhabitants of Europe lived in a collective social structure such as a clan, and the state carried no responsibility for the individual’s survival; rather, people relied almost completely for their living on their clan. Only under the national states that emerged in Europe, which took responsibility for the survival and social needs of their citizens, did the interdependence between individuals and their clans or families become less vital, thus allowing a process of independence. The state system enables the individual to relinquish the vital interdependence with the family and to rely on interdependence with the state’s institutions. The role of citizens within this new relationship is to work, obey the law, and serve the welfare of the state. In return, the citizen’s needs are either provided by the state or can be attained financially, without reliance on the family, clan, or tribe. Only within this socio-political context can individuation of personality take place.

Individualism brought a newborn into the world: the individual, who came to be recognized as an independent legitimate entity. This entity had not previously been known and therefore nobody had been interested in learning about it. Only after the birth of the individual did a need arise to study and learn about its development. What are the characteristics and qualities of the individual? What are the factors that direct and control his or her behavior? These urgent questions led to the development of psychology as a science that was intended to describe the development, personality, and psychopathology of the individual, and to learn how to develop and change his or her behavior through education and psychotherapy. Hence theories of development, personality, psychological disorders, and psychotherapy emerged.

In collectivistic societies, where the state is still not responsible for the needs of its citizens, individuals still rely on their families or tribes for their survival. In these societies in Africa, Asia, and South America, the family or tribe takes care of child rearing, jobs, housing, and protection. This survival interdependence maintains psychological interdependence and therefore most people in these societies have collective identities rather than independent personalities or selves.

Figure 1.1 A continuum of individualism (circles) and collectivism (squares)

It is important to remember that individualism–collectivism is not categorical, but rather is a continuum along which people in the world are spread (Figure 1.1). In today’s modern world where there are so many global influences and interactions, no culture is isolated from others. People everywhere are exposed to other cultures through travel, TV, the internet, and computer technology. And many people, especially the young, are influenced by, and struggle with, changing cultural beliefs and values. Therefore, the majority of the people in the world fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum of individualism–collectivism, showing some collectivistic characteristics and some individualistic ones. Still, the majority of people in the West are closer to the individualistic end of the continuum, although some, particularly immigrants, still maintain collectivistic values and norms. Of course many people in the collectivistic societies of Asia, Africa, and South America, in particular educated people, adopt an individualistic style of life.

Interestingly, the idea of individualistic and collectivistic societies is more accepted by people in Asia, Africa, and South America, because, seemingly, they consider it to be a recognition of their own unique, legitimate collectivistic cultures, despite the changes toward individualism that they see in their societies. Westerners, on the other hand, who are more open and believe in pluralism and personal choice, refuse to consider themselves as belonging to one category, that of an individualistic society. Hamamura (2011), who is himself a teacher at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, pointed out that Americans express preferences for social and daily behaviors that are different from one another, while Koreans express preferences that are more similar. In another study, Kim and Markus (1999) showed European Americans and Asian Americans a series of pictures in which several small abstract objects of the same shape were grouped together to form a pattern, with the exception of a few objects that had a different orientation. Participants were asked to indicate how much they liked each object. European Americans liked the unique objects more that Asian Americans did, indicating that collectivistic cultures foster a preference for “fitting in” and individualistic cultures foster a preference for “standing out.” This illustrates why one can expect Americans not to be comfortable with being classified as all belonging to one category, that of individualism.

Collectivistic culture

Culture is a set of norms, values, and styles of life that have developed during the collective experience of many generations in a certain environment. When we set out to learn about the characteristics of one culture as compared to others, we need to avoid three major biases: universalism or “color-blindness,” which misses the uniqueness of each culture; generalization, which paints every individual in the same culture with the same brush; and neglect of the universal characteristics that are shared among human kind. In this section, I will describe the main characteristics of the collectivistic pole of the individualism–collectivism continuum. Readers may notice some generalization, but this is inevitable when we set out to describe any culture. Therefore, I ask the reader to be aware of the three above-mentioned possible biases.

Generally speaking, in collectivistic cultures norms and values override self-choice, and the harmony of the collective is more important than fulfillment of the self. Individuals who adhere to the norms and accept harmony obtain fulfillment of Maslow’s three basic needs: biological needs, safety needs, and a need for belonging. However, once they advance toward self-actualization, all these needs are threatened, and exclusion, rejection, and punishment are to be expected. The self in these cultures is not differentiated from the collective and therefore it is a collective self that parallels the needs, ideas, attitudes, and values of the collective. Hofstede (2001) indicated the distinction between individualism and collectivism, as shown in Table 1.1.

Psychology can be considered as a byproduct of individualism that has facilitated our understanding of the individual in Western society. Paul Pedersen (1990) was the first to consider the multicultural perspective as the fourth force in psychology, after psychoanalysis, humanism, and the behavioral-cognitive approach. I take Pedersen’s idea one step further, and claim that, among people who live in a collectivistic cultural system, the cultural norms, values, and patterns may be considered as not only a fourth factor, but also as a meta-factor that influences and shapes the other three. The social norms and values of the collective, in fact, determine the psychological constructs and dynamics of all the theories. In psychoanalysis, culture determines the id, ego, super-ego, defense mechanisms, and guilt that are supposed to explain the intra-psychic dynamic of symptoms. It determines the self, the ideal self, and self-fulfillment, which are the basic constructs of personality according to humanistic approaches. The social collective net also exerts an almost direct influence on environmental contingencies, as well as on the client’s inner thoughts or axioms, which are emphasized in behavioral-cognitive theories.

Table 1.1 Characteristics of individualistic versus collectivistic cultures

Individualism	Collectivism
All people are supposed to take care of themselves and their immediate family only	People are born into extended families or clans, which protect them in exchange for loyalty
“I”-consciousness	“We”-consciousness
Right to privacy	Stress on belonging
Speaking one’s mind is healthy	Harmony should always be maintained
Others classified as individuals	Others classified as in-group or out-group
Personal opinion expected: one person one vote	Opinions and votes predetermined by in-group
Transgression of norms leads to guilt feelings	Transgression of norms leads to shame feelings
Languages in which the word “I” is indispensable	Languages in which the word “I” is avoided
Purpose of education is learning how to learn	Purpose of education is learning how to do
Task prevails over relationship	Relationship prevails over task

Many studies have shown that culture in fact colors many basic psychological functions and demonstrated the complex interplay between culture and mind (Hamamura, 2011). The sense of self varies between individualistic and collectivistic cultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). For instance, in a study where subjects were asked to complete sentences starting with “I am …,” Americans were more likely to describe themselves using abstract attributes that are dispositional in nature and stable across situations, such as shy, outgoing, or honest, while Japanese participants were much likely to describe themselves by referencing social roles and group membership, such as college student or daughter (Cousins, 1989). In a similar study, Japanese and American participants were asked to complete the same sentences starting with “I am …,” but this time in four different social situations (alone, with peers, with a professor, and in a group). The Japanese participants were more influenced by the situation than the Americans: their descriptions of the self were more variable across situations than the Americans’ self-descriptions (Kanagawa et al., 2001). In addition, reported memories of American and Chinese children indicate cultural differences: the memories of Americans tended to include more content narrated from their own perspective (their emotions and opinions) and more descriptions of the self as a unique and stable being. In contrast, the memories of Chinese children tended to include more content narrated from the perspective of others and more descriptions of the self as a social being, frequently referring to social categories and relationships (Wang, 2004).

Despite these clear-cut cultural differences between individualism and collectivism, one should still be aware of individual differences within each culture. The issue of the idiosyncrasy of cultural behavior has long been overlooked. Kitayama and his colleagues (2009), through several tasks related to individualism–collectivism, theoretically measured attributes such as self-concept, attribution style, and sensitivity to contextual information, in four countries (the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Japan). In all tasks, the Americans showed themselves to be the most individualistic, the Japanese to be the most collectivistic, and the British and Germans were individualistic but to a lesser extent than the Americans. At the individual level, however, these tasks were unrelated to one another, so Kitayama and his colleagues suggested that the role of individualism and collectivism is the unifying theme of a cultural syndrome, but that within each culture various psychological processes are used in an idiosyncratic fashion to strive toward individualism or collectivism (Kitayama et al., 2009). According to this study, there are several patterns of collectivism that may incorporate various aspects of self-concept, attribution style, and sensitivity to contextual information, and individuals adapt them differently in different situations and contexts, such as the private context or in family, work, and social life.

When Western psychology is applied blindly to collectivistic societies, ignoring culture, it may become misleading and often counterproductive. In the following sections, I will describe the incompatibility of theories of development, personality, and psychopathology with people from collectivistic cultures.

Psychological development

Theories of development differ in their focus on certain aspects of development, but all share the idea of separation-individuation. Sigmund Freud focused on psychosexual development and on sexual identity, which was supposed to be developed after successfully coping with the oedipal conflict. Erick Erickson focused on psycho-social development and described how the child passes through the stage of autonomy at the age of three years to the stage of identity after adolescence, and becomes independent and ready for the intimacy stage. Jean Piaget focused on cognitive development and agreed that in adolescence normal children become autonomous. Object-relation theories have focused on the process of separation-individuation that starts at two to three years of age and continues during and after adolescence. Therefore, according to Western theories of development there is a wide agreement that normal development typically ends in the individual possessing an independent self or identity. A dependent identity among adults is considered to be immature according to these theories. DSM V even categorized having such a personality as a disorder (dependent personality disorder, category 301.6).

Despite the fact that all theories of development consider adole...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes
• Introduction
• 1. Culture and Psychology
• 2. Fitness of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Across Cultures
• 3. Contradictions and Inconsistencies in a Culture
• 4. Culture Analysis
• 5. Using Metaphors in Culture Analysis
• 6. Culture Analysis and Memories
• 7. Physical Environment and Culture Analysis
• 8. Cases
• References
• Index