Cultural psychiatry has grown as a branch of social psychiatry and now we have transcultural psychiatry. It concerns itself with the cultural aspects of etiology and the nature of mental illness as seen in more than one cultural unit. Some basic concepts are discussed and two major approaches are delineated. These are focused on quantitative and qualitative differences of mental disorders in contrasting cultures. In this survey article, some examples are given as they pertain to psychoneurosis, psychosis, and culture-bound psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, psychoanalytic theory does not seem to have been used as a tool in understanding some of these reported phenomena.