Culture, personality and psychotherapy.
Conventional Western-model psychotherapy is based on a number of premises regarding its rationale and technique. The increasing experience in psychotherapy globally is questioning the universality of these premises, suggesting that these could be to a large extent culture-specific, having developed in a particular culture at a particular time. Hence, the need to move from a dogmatic approach to psychotherapy to a flexible approach taking into account the socio-cultural reality. The paper identifies a number of cultural variables involving the intrapsychic mechanisms (e.g. cognitive and expressive), social relatedness (e.g. autonomy, social distance) and religious-philosophical belief systems (concept of sin, and belief in fatalism and after-life/reincarnation) and discusses their role in the approach to and process of psychotherapy, illustrating it with the situation in the Indian setting.
Varma
V K
VK
Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.
D003469:Culture; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010551:Personality; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012944:Social Support