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Intercultural Psychotherapy: An Historical Perspective

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Intercultural Psychotherapy

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Abstract

Throughout human history, people have experienced unanticipated losses and life crises. These have included natural disasters, accidents, illness, interpersonal strife, armed conflict, and wars. Efforts to cope with these personal losses and life crises have involved attributing their cause either to supernatural or other malign influences beyond their control, or to personal failings. Healing rituals evolved to appease the spirit world, diminish psychological distress related to personal responsibility for losses, provide hope for recovery, and restore community solidarity. In this chapter, we review the history of psychological and acculturative stress related to migration, whether voluntary or involuntary, and the changes in national policy toward immigrants and refugees over the past century. We also review the common features of healing rituals, including psychotherapy, and the factors that enhance personal resilience and functional improvement through psychotherapy. We describe the social, psychological, and national policy effects of the vastly increased flow of voluntary and involuntary migration over the past century, as well as the need to provide culturally competent and sensitive forms of psychotherapy for the increasingly multicultural populations which mental health staffs currently encounter in clinical settings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Ronald Wintrob

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    John M. de Figueiredo

Authors
  1. Ronald Wintrob
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  2. John M. de Figueiredo
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Correspondence to Ronald Wintrob .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychiatric University Clinic of Charité at St. Hedwig Hospital, Berlin, Germany

    Meryam Schouler-Ocak

  2. Copenhagen, Denmark

    Marianne C. Kastrup

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Wintrob, R., de Figueiredo, J.M. (2020). Intercultural Psychotherapy: An Historical Perspective. In: Schouler-Ocak, M., Kastrup, M. (eds) Intercultural Psychotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24082-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24082-0_1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24082-0

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