“Homo Sovieticus” In Transition: Psychoanalysis and Problems of Social Adjustment

In any cross-cultural interaction it is extremely important to be aware of assumptions and values within the given context of a culture-bound system of beliefs. Quite often what looks similar and familiar to the alien observer — the given information or the behavior pattern — may carry very different meanings in other cultural contexts. There is a story about a man who spent several weeks in the United States and upon his return home as an “expert” on American society gave the following report: “Comrades, the situation of the proletariat under advanced capitalism can only deteriorate, just as Marx and Lenin predicted. Imagine, comrades, American workers are so poor that they resort to eating dog meat, which is sold openly in the form of sausages called, appropriately enough, ‘hot dog.’ And (he added), I went to one of those baseball games the American capitalists organize to keep unemployed workers off the streets and to distract them from mounting a revolution. I distinctly heard one worker ask his companion whether she wanted to have one of these dog meat sausages and you know, comrades, what her answer was? ‘Yes, please, John, I am dying of hunger!’ So, you see how bad it is for the American worker.”

The author is a faculty member of the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute and Center and Fellow of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis.