Culture – Parents – Child

A child’s personality develops through a process of adaptation between children and their parents. However, both also live within a culture to which the parents adapt (children do not yet understand culture).

– Why does your culture play a special role?
In Asian, African and South American cultures, an individual is not regarded by their society as an autonomous person, as in north-western individualistic cultures (Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand), but as part of a group (primarily parents, siblings and the extended family; in academic terms, this group is often referred to as the ‘we group’). What an individual does, how they behave, what they have achieved in life, what skills and abilities they possess, but also what shortcomings and deviations from societal ideals they display, results in a ‘societal’ assessment not only of the individual themselves, but of the entire group to which they belong (family, extended family, ‘we-group’).

In such collectivist cultures, an individual and their ‘We-group’ receive not only much praise and recognition (e.g. at a wedding attended by many people), affirmation, prestige and support from society (e.g. in the event of a bereavement or illness) when they fulfil the culture’s ideals (e.g. being a doctor or a lawyer, being wealthy, being well-known and famous, being decent and well behaved), but they and their ‘We-group’ are also severely devalued if they fail to fulfil the culture’s ideals or violate certain norms and values (shame). Other living conditions also play an important role here, such as poverty, war, a hostile environment, injustice, discrimination and the like.

– Different personality development: This distinctive feature means that most people there remain dependent on their parents and their ‘We-group’ throughout their lives, or are expected to do so. Consequently, their personality is structured, developed, organised and shaped differently from that of people from north-western individualistic cultures.

– One of the aims of psychodynamic psychotherapy is to help people understand their unconscious conflicts, challenges, feelings, desires, fantasies and the like. In our experience, people from collectivist cultures have a different psychodynamic structure to that familiar from Western psychotherapeutic approaches. Consequently, one cannot simply adopt ‘Western’ approaches and apply them to people from other cultures.