Transcultural Psychiatry. Ari Kiev. New York:  Free Press, 1972. ii +  223 pp.

This is a pioneering study of “disturbed” behavior in a wide variety of non-Western cultural settings. The author has reviewed a wealth of cross-cultural data, mostly descriptive, and has suggested a number of provocative synthetic and interpretive formulations. The last quarter of the book deals with problems of psychiatric research, therapy, and administration in developing countries.

The distinguishing characteristics of this volume are originality and boldness in identifying and grouping seemingly disparate behavioral observations, and a consistently high level of sophistication on the interpretive level. For clinicians and researchers who feel the need for a broad psychodynamic perspective, this book will prove extremely useful. The author provides vivid, well-documented descriptions of psychotic and neurotic reactions in many different tribal and folkloristic contexts, ranging from Africa to Southeast Asia to South America. Syndromes included in his careful survey are transient forms of schizophrenia, depressions, anxiety states, obsessional neuroses, hysterias, and dissociative states. Nor does Professor Kiev omit examples taken from several North American subcultures and socioeconomic strata. His account of the apparently inverse relationship between depressive reactions and socialization by identity-diffusion (in tribal contexts) is first rate and provides important corroboration for the Freudian view of the central roles of identification and introjection in the etiology of self-critical behavior. Kiev makes a contribution of considerable theoretical and practical value in pointing out the incompatibility of group-based identity with the characterological requirements of developing societies, or the demands of highly industrialized societies. His evaluation of the problems created by rapid social change is a strong reminder of the difficulties inherent in deliberately creating new social arrangements, and of the strength of traditional mechanisms of social