Psychoanalysis and Members of Minority Groups1

Both analysts and their patients in this mid-twentieth century United States are participating members in a society in which intergroup tensions and cultural prejudices are prevalent. Socially ranked grouping involves membership by both analyst and patient in cultural groups of higher or lower status valuation. Inevitably, this enters into the intricate and intensive relationship between analyst and patient, to some extent. The analyst's anonymity is only relative and least maintained as regards his social class, religious, national and racial group membership. The patient's group memberships are, of course, fully known to the analyst.

The term "minority group" will be used to refer to ethnic and religious groups of relatively lowered social status whose members form a minority in relation to the United States in general, and to the local community of the patient's origin and rearing in particular. Consideration of other minorities, such as political, is not attempted here, although some of the discussion is no doubt applicable to such groups.

An increasing number of psychoanalytic investigations—some in collaboration with social scientists—have studied individuals belonging to various cultural groups. Some of these studies—many concerned with societies remote from our own—have sought to differentiate culturally determined and idiosyncratic aspects of personality, as for instance, by Kardiner's (7) concepts of basic personality structure and individual character. Other psychoanalytic