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TRANSCULTURAL PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH has sought to determine the influence of social structure and socialization practices of the etiology and symptomatology of personality disorders and to establish general principles which might assist psychotherapists in their efforts to better understand and more successfully treat people from divergent sociocultural backgrounds. Such research has become world wide in its scope and its latest efforts can be assessed from perusal of Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, now in its thirteenth volume. Recent unpublished studies of the psychological illnesses of immigrants into the United States of members of lower socioeconomic groups have indicated that their form and dynamics can best be understood in terms of the folklore of their native lands. Thus, a common psychopathological constellation found in Philadelphia among Italians is clearly a derivative of the malocchio (evil eye) beliefs and a condition found among Puerto Ricans stems from the ataqué syndrome (Freeman 1976).
During the past thirty-odd years, increasing attention has been paid to the sociopsychological problems of North American Indians. In the course of this research, it has become obvious that those who seek to assist individuals of non-European derivation must undergo training (1) that will rid them of ethnocentric prejudices which lead inevitably to countertransferential problems (Boyer 1964) and (2) that they must acquaint themselves with the specific bases which determine their patients' culturally bound modes of communication. Various studies have been devoted to