Adaptation to the Dominant Society and Identification with the Aggressor as Factors in the Treatment of Chicanos

Although Erikson's seminal work (1950) introduced into psychoanalysis a rich and complex approach to the role of culture in personality development and functioning, it is only recently that there has been a productive resurgence in the interest in cross-cultural psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Recent contributions are summarized in the work of Abel et al. (1987), Comas-Diaz and Griffith (1988), Gaw (1982), and Wilkinson (1986). This article explores the issues related to personality dynamics that result when individuals from one cultural background have to adjust to a society in which a more powerful majority are from a different cultural heritage.

Adaptation and identification with the aggressor are central factors in approaching treatment with Chicanos. Adaptation refers to one group's adopting the traditions, customs, value systems, and patterns-of-interaction of another group. Thus, for Chicanos adaptation is characterized by their adopting the cultural patterns of the dominant Anglo-Saxon society.

The degree to which Chicanos adapt is measured by the extent to which they are able to participate knowingly and successfully in the social and economic spheres of the dominant society. Adaptation does not imply that an individual has abandoned his own culture and chosen another. It does imply a capacity for success in the dominant society and an ability to move between the two cultural contexts.

Identification with the aggressor is a psychoanalytic concept elaborated by Anna Freud (1936) and Bettelheim (1943). Identification