The Culturing of Psychoanalysis

“I would hazard that, in the case of most people in gatherings such as these, their presence is due to a vivid, largely incoherent uneasiness. They are nagged by a sense that something is terribly wrong and that they must do what they can to put it right; but much of their quality, or lack of it, depends on what they perceive to be wrong.”

From my very first contact with psychoanalysis, a fascination in the theory and practice took hold of me. But becoming a psychoanalyst was a bit unimaginable. How would a lower-middle-class Palestinian immigrant navigate such a life goal? How could I possibly pay for years of analysis and navigate an environment I perceived as potentially hostile to me? I really did not know, but the calling did not subside.

My training was difficult, almost impossible. I knew psychoanalysis contained deep potential for understanding individuals and groups. Yet the version I was learning at the institute and the way I was being taught to apply it did not work for me personally, or for the patients I was treating. I became despondent. I could clearly see that neither me nor my patients were getting the transformative help we hoped for.

Looking for manifestations of Oedipal material and drive derivatives in my patients' transferences, particularly bicultural immigrants, was simply not working. I began to explore the notion that something was wrong, a key ingredient may have been missing from the approach I was being asked to adopt. What about culture? I thought. How does culture impact how people think, feel, and behave, and how should we think about it analytically?

I started talking about culture in my supervisions and classes. What is it exactly, and how does it work in the minds of individuals and in the coordination of large groups? Generally, the response was one of disinterest, as though I were speaking of something esoteric with little relevance to what we do. One of my supervisors referred me to Freud's work on culture and