By Neil Altman (USA)
Psychoanalysis in an Age of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization (Routledge, 2015) addresses the current status of mental health work in the public and private sectors. The careful, thorough, approach to the individual person characteristic of psychoanalysis is now mostly the province of an affluent few. Meanwhile, community-based mental health treatment, given shrinking budgets, tends to emphasize medication and short-term therapies. In an increasingly diverse society, considerations of culture in mental health treatment are given short shrift, despite obligatory nods to cultural competence.
The field of mental health has suffered from the mutual isolation of psychoanalysis, community-based clinical work, and cultural studies. In this volume, Altman suggests that each of these areas of study and practice requires and enriches the others. The field of psychoanalysis benefits by engaging marginalized communities and paying attention to culture; likewise, community-based clinical work benefits from psychoanalytic concepts as well as an awareness of culture. Cultural studies are also enriched by psychoanalytic attention to the unconscious dimensions of interpersonal interaction in clinical work and in everyday life. Altman’s book includes reports of clinical experiences and programmatic developments from around the world. The international scope allows for a rich consideration of the operation of culture and cultural differences in conceptions of mental health.
Additionally, his book addresses the origin and treatment of mental illness, from notions of spirit possession treated by shamans, to conceptions of psychic trauma, to biological understandings and pharmacological treatments. In the background of this discussion is globalization, the impact of which is tracked in terms of its psychological effects on people, as well as on the resources and programs available to provide psychological care around the world
To order please visit: http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415812566/
Neil Altman, PhD
275 Central Park W. #13E
New York, N.Y. 10024 USA
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