Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2012, 57, 629644

Caught between cultures: cultural norms in

Jungian psychodynamic process
Gretchen Heyer, Houston, USA
Abstract: In our increasingly mobile world, more of us are caught between cultures
rather than in one culture. We straddle different ethnic, racial, political, geographical,
and religious groups, forced into awareness of the precarious nature of our self-denition,
involuntarily gazing at the constructed nature of our cultural norms, unable to avoid
reckoning with the choices of which collective to honour. The impossibility of separating
individual fromcollective is foundational to work as Jungian practitioners, but a paradox
of individuation is becoming free of the control of collective norms while simultaneously
living within those very norms. In such a conict it becomes easy to overlook the fact that
when the norms we have incorporated into ourselves are from cultures vastly different
from the one in which we live, the cacophony can be overwhelming. In this paper, I will
draw from postmodern theorists such as Derrida, Foucault and Irigaray in an effort to
re-imagine the role of culture in psychodynamic process. The case of a Muslim Iranian
man working with a Christian American woman analyst will be used to explore the
complexity of a multitude of cultural norms present in the consulting room.
Key words: cultural norms, individuation, multitude, psychodynamic
Traditionally psychodynamic work focuses more on interpersonal and inter-
familial dynamics than intercultural ones. In part this is due to the way our
Western culture has acquired a privileged status in the world. While we know
that there is no unitary culture, we can still be somewhat colonial in our
approach, as if the culture we operate from is The One everyone should operate
from, as if those who come into psychotherapy and analysis have a culture in
common. And, in some ways, this assumption holds merit. No matter where a
patient is raised, by the time he or she crosses the threshold of our consulting
rooms they share several western views, not the least of which is the belief
that another person can offer help or insight they are willing to pay for and
that there are certain commonalities to the human experience they may benet
from by whatever name, instincts, mythic complexes, drives, archetypes, needs
or desires. Given this backdrop, it seems natural to focus on commonalities,
This paper draws in part from a presentation at the IAAP Congress in Montreal in August 2010.
0021-8774/2012/5705/629
C
2012, The Society of Analytical Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2012.02007.x
630 Gretchen Heyer
glossing over cultural differences with analytic theories, techniques and good
intentions.
However, in our increasingly mobile world, more and more of us are caught
between cultures rather than in one culture. We straddle different ethnic,
racial, political, geographical, and religious groups, involuntarily gazing at the
constructed nature of our cultural allegiances, unable to avoid reckoning with
the choices of which collective to honour. We struggle with norms in conict,
trying to grab a foothold in the boggy realm of self and other delineations. And
while those of us in the clinical arena are well aware that it is impossible to
separate an individual fromthe collective in self-formation, it is easy to overlook
the fact that when norms we have incorporated into ourselves are from cultures
vastly different from the culture in which we currently live, tensions can be
agonizing.
To explore some of these tensions, I am using the case of a Muslim Iranian
man constructed out of several men of Middle Eastern heritage that I see in
my consulting ofce. Imagine Farzeen with a shiny, shaved head, wearing wire-
rimed glasses, a stripped button down shirt and pressed slacks. Farzeen left Iran
with his family when he was seven and has since lived in Pakistan, Norway
and the United States. While his family is devoutly Muslim, Farzeen is a self-
proclaimed agnostic, attending daily prayers to appease his parents. He tells me
that he has tried psychodynamic treatment before: It didnt work. I was just a
business proposition to that man.
It quickly becomes clear that money is extremely important to Farzeen, a route
to equality, a means of erasing the category foreigner he feels himself pigeon-
holed. He believes socialized political systems keep people stuck by providing
nancial subsidies to refugees. His younger brother has remained in Norway
and married an Iranian girl, living off his government subsidy. By Farzeens
account, his brother is unable to get jobs due to his brown skin and ethnicity.
Paradoxically, given his objection to nancial subsidies, Farzeen lives with his
parents. The family is now asking that he nalizes his arranged marriage to a
cousin in Iran. The two are to continue living in his parents house and support
them, although the parents are healthy and in their fties. For sex Farzeen goes
to prostitutes, including those conned in places known for sexual slavery.
In these few lines of description cultural and personal difference are already
dened. Bought sex differs fromthat which is not paid for. Arranging a marriage
and shipping a spouse across the globe differs from growing relationships
that mature to more formalized commitment. Moving into the home of able
bodied parents differs from establishing ones own household. My own values
of independence, relationship and choice colour my perception with a kind of
prejudice in the countertransference, a gut sense of judgement, a need to distance
and diagnose values that are different from mine. And to make this more
confusing, Farzeen judges himself. His disgust of his own actions is projected
both on to me (the way he sees me) and into me (the way he makes me feel).
Caught between cultures 631
But while there are issues of cultural difference between us, the Western
culture we share is also woven into Farzeens psychology. He is steeped in
myths of capitalism, independence and romantic love, along with his familys
traditional communal values where individual relationship is in service to the
whole. It is difcult, even impossible, for Farzeen to make choices on romance
or home that will be esteemed by his family as well as his Western culture.
And I am now woven into his conict with my conscious and unconscious
value judgements in the countertransference, along with the racial and cultural
subtext of the analytic process with which we are engaged.
A question of norms
Historical underpinnings affect ways we think about our work, norms that go
unexamined. The French philosopher Michel Foucault highlighted this, tracing
connement and treatment of the insane back to the 1500s when those standing
idle around the town squares of Europe were rounded up and institutionalized.
It was a time when sloth was bad. Work was good. This was a moral issue, not
so very different from the moral value often placed on work today. One of the
things Foucault focused on was what a norm was/is and why we have it. He
raised the issue of the moral value we place on norms and how it is humanly
impossible to inoculate against this (Foucault 1988, 1994).
However, much as norms are part of the collective unconscious we live in, we
can still attempt to consciously step back and question them. Celia Brickman
is one who engages some of the norms in perpetuating analytic work. She
explores Freuds view of the primitive, pointing out that its evolutionary and
historicizing tendencies had to affect Freuds clinical relationships, as well as
those of his followers, with a kind of racially prejudiced subtext (Brickman
2003, p. 174). And while Jung looked to other cultures as an antidote to
the West, his view of the primitive had its own evolutionary and historicizing
tendencies, such as his description of the primitive needing a pantomime to be
motivated, while the civilized needed only a word (Jung 1930, para. 1289). The
value-laden presuppositions of this become obvious, but less obvious is the way
such presuppositions are woven into theory and practice for every one of us.
Foucault was not fond of any form of psychoanalysis, seeing it as a
technology of the self invested in perpetuating certain forms of culture.
Brickman expands on this.
The clinical relationship provides the relational framework that regulates the contours
of the subjectivity it produces. In turn, the clinical relationship is moulded by
the theoretical understanding that guides the comportment of the analyst and the
production of interpretations. The underlying theoretical understanding expresses a
particular normative vision which the treatment, within the context of the transference,
aims to approximate.
(Brickman 2003, p. 177)
632 Gretchen Heyer
That is, norms embedded within the analytic process are rooted in the
historical underpinnings of analysis itself. Such norms perpetuate themselves,
even promote themselves.
Neil Altman is another who uses a Foucaultian critique to confront hidden
prejudice in the analytic process. Altman describes the way psychoanalysis
traditionally places causes of psychopathology within the psyche of the patient.
This not only ignores the role of the social and the political, it simultaneously
excludes racial minorities and the poor by viewing them as un-analysable, as if
particular cultural practices or not enough money are equal to not enough ego
strength. Altman points out that the concept of ego strength itself presupposes
characteristics that are culture and class specic (Altman 1995, p. 43). And if
ego strength is seen to be further along the evolutionary scale, then those who
do not have it are seen as evolutionarily behind (ibid., p. 45).
Within the Jungian community those such as Andrew Samuels (1989, 1993)
address political aspects that go into making us who we know ourselves to
be, while Thomas Singer (2004, pp. 1334) coins the concept of the cultural
complex. However, the historical norms of analytic culture remain with us. We
cannot help but have our own values, our own prejudices that are embedded
in the analytic culture in which we live. At best we can struggle for awareness
of the ways these hidden assumptions impact clinical process, which is itself an
analytic norm, that of moving towards consciousness and self-reection.
Farzeen
Farzeen has difculty going to work, having lost several jobs due to tardiness.
He says he comes to see me so that he can get to work on time. I am to make
him happy, to make him a good son. Farzeen says his family is disturbed by
his coming to see me as problems should be handled within the family. For
the rst months of our process, he repeatedly asks to bring his parents into
sessions because he believes he does not accurately report himself; he does not
trust himself. Although from one angle this is precisely the issue we have to
deal with: a strengthening of his sense of self, of his ego, so that he can trust
his point of view this itself is a western individualistic angle. In an effort to
counteract some of my own cultural bias and adapt to his perspective, I agree
to allow his mother into a session.
She looks thirty not fty and frequently interrupts him, speaking in Persian.
When she does speak to me, it is to tell me in perfect English that he needs to
eat less, to speak politely to his parents, to earn more money, to be more willing
to help around the house, and I am to make him do these things because he is
inept, lazy and cannot motivate himself.
While any sort of analytic process values independence and individuality,
Farzeen is faced with a pernicious dilemma. In simplistic form, he either
separates from the American culture in which he has found a home and
conforms to his familys idea of a good Iranian son, or he separates from
Caught between cultures 633
his family and afrms values of individuality that are woven into the culture
in which he now lives. While no choice is that simple, that either/or, for me
to take a stand that he separates from his family and their agendas that seem
restricting and far too communal to my Western sensibilities, to take this stand
is to bypass the values of his heritage and tradition. In fact, such a stand
becomes external to his struggle, an easy answer that ts with some image
of autonomy or individuation. Yet even this simplies Farzeens struggle, and
unfairly characterizes the individuation process.
Farzeen lives in a family where men are expected to be dominant and sexually
promiscuous while women are to remain faithful, yet he is also aware of the
disrespect he imposes on women with his sexual escapades. By the very position
we are in: my self as an independent woman alone in a psychotherapy ofce
with him he has a sense of some of what I stand for, including my values of
relationship and sexuality. In turn, my countertransference reaction of disgust
is as if he puts his sense of shame and being disgusting into me via projective
identication so that I can punish him for it. Once he heavily struck a woman,
telling me in tears, saying that he knew I would no longer agree to see him. At
a visceral level I feel and hold this disgusting sense of himself, not merely the
shame in being himself, but the shame of not wanting to be good for those
around him, yet compelled to or there will be certain rejection. In sessions I
address the sadomasochistic elements to this, interpreting his desire to be a
good son as a desire for love and acceptance, and his desire to be bad as a
desire for power and freedom, the punishment as a form of payment for his
freedom. We talk of his love/hate towards women, of the power and confusion
of his internalized authoritarian structure, of the social and political factors at
play. I nd myself wondering about my role in his oppression.
Am I one more authority to please, make happy, to accept punishment from
in order to do what he wants? He sees me as part of the dominant Western
culture, so is it that he needs a mentor in Western ways, a woman who will
confront his views of women? Or perhaps through relationship with me he
strives to obtain power over the feminine nature of his tyranny, seeing himself
in his sexual partners as well as in me and seeking to have power over us, a
type of projected effort to gain power over himself, his own life. The theme for
many of his sexual domination scenarios is one of pleasure, a pride in giving the
woman pleasure, a rage when he is not pleasured himself. And from a young
age he was catered to. He had servants. He called the shots.
Jessica Benjamin is a psychoanalytic writer exploring ideas of dominance,
submission and recognition. She revisits Hegels view of the master/slave to
ask what the master and slave want. Benjamin suggests that part of what
occurs in scenes of domination is that the one who dominates is trying
to deny dependence. She then looks to early infant relations to nd what
might alter this domination scenario, mining Winnicotts work (1971), to say
that the infant needs to try and destroy the other, and the other needs to
survive this destruction. If this fails and the caretaker abandons, retaliates or
634 Gretchen Heyer
retreats, Benjamin believes there can be later issues with power and domination.
Recognition becomes a key, a way through this morass, a type of respect that
allows the other to be who they are, to say what they need to say, a struggle
to understand without forcing the other into some pre-ordained social scenario
(Benjamin 1998, p. 37).
Although this takes Farzeens conict out of the social/cultural realm and
back to the inter-personal, it seems unavoidable. We all have within ourselves
aspects of the other as a culture and individual, as well as relations to the other
as culture and individual. And whatever happened in his infancy, Farzeen is
dominant in his various sexual exploits, then comes to me and his family in a
submissive fashion to ask forgiveness and be punished. I am the dominant one,
not merely because I ampart of the dominant culture or because he comes to me
for insight and help; I am dominant because he gives me the power to forgive
him, to punish him. This makes the need for awareness of my own norms and
values even more important. It is so terribly easy to impose what is important
to me on to him, reducing his experience to terms that are external to it.
Yet having an external perspective is also unavoidable. The genius of our
psychoanalytic forefathers and mothers was as much a function of overlaying
patients with their interpretations and agendas as it was truly listening to where
patients were coming from. Our external terms are not merely various afnities
to theories and approaches, but also our histories, genetics and ideologies.
Farzeen has come to me for my training in examining assumptions for their
conscious and unconscious effect on him, but he has also come for my Western
perspective, my feminist perspective and even (unconsciously) my perspective
as the child of missionaries with my own medley of cultures.
Symptoms and symbolization
For Farzeen, the stated symptom of coming late to work, is a behaviour
that does not make him the familys good son and the stated reason for
coming to see me is that he wants to be that good son. From the traditional
view of psychodynamic treatment, we have to wonder what the symptoms are
pointing to. There is a conict: to be or not to be the good son. If Farzeen
behaves as the good son, the family and community he lives in will reward
him by a certain type of acknowledgement. If he does not, most likely he will
not get this acknowledgement. As someone who is primarily embedded in a
Western mindset, I lean towards independence, autonomy, and away from his
unconscious subservience to his familys agendas.
But theory can be used as a defence in this way. We believe we recognize
something, slot it into a familiar path. To believe that I know the kind of
independence Farzeen needs overlooks permutations of secrecy that ripple
through social settings of diverse cultures, affecting boundaries between self
and other. How we dene both self and other shifts when portions of self are
forbidden in one culture but not another. Farzeen can be respected for his sexual
Caught between cultures 635
promiscuity and even be something of a predator in his familys culture, but
not the Western culture where such behaviour goes underground. He can be
independent and make his own choices of a life partner in the Western culture,
but not his familys culture. The aura of what is and is-not forbidden brings
up dynamics of power and gender, of colonialism and post-colonialism. This
becomes even more complex when we factor in desires polymorphous nature.
What any of us desire at a particular moment depends not only on what is
allowed and expected, but on what is thwarted, fullled, forbidden or altered
into another desire.
So how might we see Farzeens sexual behaviour? He does not state it as a
problem, although he hides aspects of it from his family, different aspects from
his friends and co-workers, and no doubt certain aspects are hidden from me.
Is his behaviour simply the result of cultural and community pressures forming
him into a man who views women as of service to him? One of the reasons
he wants the arranged marriage is that this particular woman is a virgin who
knows how to care for men. In addition she is within the family, the tribe, the
proper Muslim sect, and already approved of by his parents.
Is Farzeens sexual behaviour some sort of culturally condoned narcissism?
And before we get too far from traditional views of analysis, it is important to
mention that Farzeens rst sexual experience was with a married woman much
older than he was, a swinger who took him into her bed with her husbands
knowledge and introduced him to sexual technique. When we are in session
the implications of this are palpable. I become the married woman in intimate
conversation, introducing him to a form of relationship with himself and those
in his life. But while he speaks of erotic feelings, my countertransference is
more maternal, one of cultural resonance and that haunting disgust. Words
such as Oedipal conict and split, words such as disordered sense of self,
sadomasochism, perversion and narcissism may indeed come to mind, but
the collision of cultures seems to call for something more difcult to describe.
There are many ways of viewing symptoms. One is as we often do: the sense
of what it means for the patients themselves. But setting aside the organic causes
of psychosis, the Spanish psychiatric anthropologist Angel Martinez-Hernaez
(2000) looks at what a symptom means to the culture in which the person
lives, to the organization of public places, streets, neighbourhoods, and shops.
Symptoms disrupt the organization of work, particularly rationalized work.
There is the question of what the symptom means to the patient, the sender
of the message and the question of what the symptom means to the receiving
group and institution, as well as the family and between family members and
the disruptive agent. Any exploration of Farzeens motivation requires that we
examine his family.
They live in an upper middle-class area of Houston where conformity to a
particular image is of great importance. Some years ago Farzeens father lost
his high level job and has been without work, yet the family keeps a maid,
cook, and butler. They drive luxury cars, have dinner in upscale restaurants,
636 Gretchen Heyer
and throw fantastic parties, while they also turn the air conditioner off in the
heat of the summer in order to save money.
Is there illness in this? If so, who is ill? What is ill? Is this family ill as it works
to establish itself in a country they have found a home in, a country their birth
country is at odds with? Living beyond ones means creates a palpable sense of
falseness, breeds its own anxiety. But image itself is a defence for many of us.
It keeps others away from what is vulnerable, frightening or at risk.
The rigid upper middle-class image of Farzeens family demands that he
appears at occasions in proper attire, goes to Mosque, and marries a woman
of the same faith, the same lineage. It demands that he eats his meals in a
particular manner, that he keeps the secret of his familys nancial difculties,
that he appears to be successful professionally no matter what this means to him
personally. And Farzeen complies, except he is late, never on time, frequently
sleeping all day. His work behaviour is a blemish on the image and his family
struggles to eradicate the blemish. But the blemish is also a kind of declaration of
individuality, non-conformity, a kind of hope. In our process together I struggle
to make him more aware of his rage, his need to have his own voice, his own
authority. He begins to speak back to his family and is angry more openly: the
lateness to work decreases. I become implicated in helping him conform to the
image.
The Jungian analyst Thomas Singer views groups as having defences similar
to individuals. The group works to protect its collective spirit just as individuals
work to protect individual spirits. And as individuals harden with defences, the
group hardens with its rules and norms. If members of a group act aggressively
or are aloof, they are seen by those outside the group as if they represent
the whole, a process which perpetuates itself so the group becomes more
isolated, more defended. Singer coins the word cultural complex for a groups
entrenched patterns of action and emotion. He raises the issue of distinguishing
the cultural or group level of the complex from the more personal level of the
complex with its archetypal core? (Singer 2004, p. 19). However, the culture
of groups is woven into every one of us. It is the people we have known, the
food we eat, the books we read and stories we tell. It is impossible to separate
the individual from the collective in our self-formation.
Amin Maalouf, a French, Christian Palestinian essayist, writes of individual
and group identity from another angle, saying that we are all made of a
number of cultural allegiances, and the allegiance that is threatened becomes
the dominant identity. This is another angle on Singers cultural complex. The
dominant identity is the threatened identity. However, Maalouf focuses on all
the various collectives that compose identity. For a time one particular group
allegiance may be claimed as dominant, and then another. The way to live in
such a morass is constant awareness.
Ones identity is made up of a number of allegiances, some linked to an ethnic past
and others not, some linked to a religious tradition and others not; when one observes
Caught between cultures 637
in oneself, in ones origin and in the course ones life has taken, a number of different
conuences and contributions, of different mixtures and inuences, some of them
quite subtle or even incompatible with one another, then one enters into a different
relationship both with other people and with ones own tribe.
(Maalouf 2000, p. 31; italics added)
Farzeen knows he is Iranian and American, Muslimand agnostic, the good son
and the bad. He is well aware that how to be, who to be, and with whom, is in
a large degree up to him. He thinks about his different cultures, struggling with
choices these force into him. Because no matter what choice Farzeen makes, by
denition he must separate from a group. However, this is nothing new to him.
The very fact of his cultural multiplicity has made himprofoundly separate from
one group or another since that early journey from Iran when he was seven.
In some ways his individuation process seems to be one of joining a group or
groups, not merely to perform the rituals, to act as if he is a member, but to
claim an allegiance as his own rather than holding himself out as separate and
different. And my task in the clinical hour is to be with him in such a way that
he can better claim what he needs to, whatever combination of collectives that
may be.
Outside views: Irigaray and Derrida
Luce Irigaray, a Lacanian analyst and French feminist philosopher raised in
Belgium, and Jacques Derrida, a postmodern French philosopher raised as a
Jew in Algeria, both share the awareness that language is not a transparent
tool. While at some level we take this for granted, the word dog is not the dog
itself, and to be called a dog in one setting implies a compliment, in another
can be an insult, and in another is a statement of life itself such as dog-eat-dog-
world. Yet the power of Irigaray and Derridas postmodern thought is the way
it can pull us away fromour tendency to reify and rigidify our use of words. This
reication of words is true of any theory, but with psychological concepts the
danger of thinking a word is-exactly-what-we-think-it-is can cause harm in the
clinical hour. It is far too easy to use a word believing that we are communicating
what we wish to communicate with it, to speak of individuation or shadow
as if we know what that really is. The power of postmodern thinkers is the way
they challenge our reication of words, our odd sense of religious certainty, so
that we can be more aware of unconscious assumptions in language itself.
Derrida and Irigaray build on a body of thought called structuralism. In
simplistic form, structuralism is a way of seeing a word or cultural pattern as
having meaning only in relation to something else, another word or cultural
item. The word dog is in relation to the animal dog that exists, but it is also in
relation to what it is not: it is not cat or baby. A word works by its difference
to other words, not necessarily by any one-to-one relationship to what exists in
the world. The post-structuralist thought of Derrida and Irigaray takes this a
638 Gretchen Heyer
step further. Not only is there no one-to-one relationship of the word with what
exists in the world the word dog has nothing to do with the creature that
might go by the name of dog but the cultural system in which the word exists
and in which that particular reality exists is also not a one-to-one relationship.
Thus, words cannot be taken as a given and a fact, so forms of knowledge then
become unreliable, and even ones sense of oneself is unreliable.
This instability of language and the forms language points to is intrinsic to
Derridas critique of identity as he examines the way that cultural constructs we
take for granted gain their meaning by binary opposition. Male is opposite to
female as if we know what male and female are. One end of a binary is usually
privileged. Traditionally male is privileged; the western view is privileged.
Binaries can be ipped to privilege the other side, and ipped back. But to
be maintained the binary requires something outside of itself, a way of seeing
and thinking, a world view that itself is a construct, a ction. Jungs theory
of archetypes has binaries such as king/queen, master/slave. But just as any
theory or world view, the theory itself can be read as a ction. Not only are
archetypes not inherited images, but what the archetype activates varies with
culture, personal and social circumstances.
The postmodern approach of Derrida and Irigaray underlines the need to be
aware of our cultural biases and see these as constructs. At its best thinking of
another culture requires some knowledge of that culture. But even then, learning
intellectually, learning from a distance, visiting a culture and coming away with
some belief we know it all these can be more detrimental in the clinical hour
than useful. Believing that we know another culture can be a ction we cling to
in the face of our insecurity. In fact, any countertransference issue can be seen
as ction. And while we are trained to examine our countertransference from
every angle, with cultural issues this examination can be like entering another
dimension of reality. The power of the postmodern approach is a willingness
to question, to turn the ideas we have taken for granted inside out, a way of
playing with what we believe we know.
Freuds idea of melancholia is one of the ideas both Irigaray and Derrida turn
inside out and use. In simplistic form, for Freud, when we mourn it is for a
dened object, but a pervasive sense of melancholia descends when we cannot
or will not dene what has been lost. In Derridas view, xed denitions of what
has been lost are impossible. Failure of mourning then becomes success because
it leaves room to respect the others otherness, the not-knowing. Whereas Freud
believed memory and interiorization to be intrinsic to the mourning process,
Derrida altered this to, an interiorizing idealization takes in itself or upon itself
the body and voice of the other, the others visage and person ideally and quasi-
literally devouring them (Derrida 1989, p. 34). The wording of this is a bit
opaque, but it echoes a very Jungian theme of howwe become the collective and
it becomes us. Cultures are transmitted as they become devoured, cannibalized
by their participants, unconsciously idealized and interiorized, leaving nothing
clear that can be dened and mourned, yet altering how one sees the world.
Caught between cultures 639
While Derrida questions if there can be successful mourning, Irigaray looks
at the way certain types of identity escape representation. Not only is there
no xed denition of what one mourns, but the other is then always in excess
of mourning. Irigaray works to re-conceptualize what it means to be different
from the dominant discourse, to live in a space that dees representation, yet
exist within the realm of the dominant discourse; in-and-not-of (Irigaray 1985,
2001). This way of being in-and-not-of is fundamental to our multiplicity of
cultures. Farzeen is in-and-not-of the western culture as I know it. He is also in-
and-not-of the traditional Iranian culture of his family. Or, as the post-colonial
thinker Homi Bhabha would say, we are already in a hybrid (Bhabha 1994).
For Irigaray, one of the keys to deal with this confusion is communication.
She believes that the needed conversations have not been taking place. We have
not been listening to one another, in part because the modes of representation
available to us are inadequate. We are locked into structured categories of
difference from a xed reference point believing that we know what we are
communicating to one another. This keeps us from hearing or seeing who/what
is really there, so that who/what is there is always in excess of our understanding.
Some of the ways these ideas can affect the clinical hour are not strange to
psychodynamic thinking. We are multitudes. The unconscious is by its very
nature unknown. What we know of ourselves slips in any given moment
to another awareness, or lack thereof. But the very nature of clinical work
makes it difcult to hold on to such awareness, even impossible. Postmodern
thinkers such as Irigaray and Derrida offer another way to approach this
impossibility.
Conclusion
As a clinician I am there to affect the patient, the sufferer who comes to see me.
That is what I am paid for. At times this is going deeper into their suffering, at
times it is offering another perspective or even opposition, at times it is taking
some of their suffering into my self, and at times it is working to take nothing
in. Whatever the case, the patient has done their very best to get to this point
in life, and by some pattern or lack or blindness or inability or need, they have
come to an impasse in which they seek help. My job is to help. And as someone
with this job, I have a series of tools, concepts and training at my disposal with
which to work.
I could have stayed within psychodynamic thought in this paper, describing
Farzeens issue as a very rigid superego structure that he internalized, and
against which he continually rebelled. After all, in every culture maturity is some
negotiation of responsibility and autonomy, while individuation can be seen as
a process of becoming free of collective norms that dictate we should be this
or that. Jung writes of the superego as offering a kind of substitute for the self
with its moral law. So long as the self is unconscious, it corresponds to Freuds
superego and is a source of perpetual moral conict (Jung 1940/54, para. 396).
640 Gretchen Heyer
Fromthis perspective, formulating Farzeens conict as being the good Iranian
son versus having his independence becomes my binary, my ction, weighted
heavily by the countertransference of Farzeens superego injunctions projected
into me, merging with a few superego injunctions of my own. The symptom
of going late to work can then be seen as yet another superego injunction;
irresponsibility has little to do with autonomy. And while Farzeen projected his
shame and guilt on to women in his sexual escapades, he also knew what he
was doing was bad, morally bad, and projected his self disgust into me. I then
struggled with the anxiety of being forced to embody his superego, to take a
moral stand against what he was doing, and thus a more dominant role in his
sadomasochism.
But while the superego problem is one way to describe Farzeen, I have
deliberately strayed beyond the bounds of psychodynamic thinkers to think
of him from every angle I could. Healing is an art/science found in all cultures
across space and time. Our Western propensity is to rationalize, to pin down,
to understand, to reduce and limit or to take refuge in mystical connections
that disconnect us from others with their own type of mysterious superiority.
Within the transference/countertransference of clinical work patients can be
contained and recognized, dynamics can be interpreted, but patients are also
beyond containment, beyond recognition and interpretation. And while naming
this dynamic is naming the obvious to clinical practitioners, when there is a
multiplicity of cultures in the consulting room, awareness of it becomes crucial.
To some degree, we are all between cultures. Culture is as much the products
of a culture, the ideas of a culture, as it is the place and people. We are barraged
with other cultures in conversation with neighbours, the art in our homes,
clothes we wear, music we listen to. Even people in remote places on the planet
know someone with a cell-phone, a car, a vaccination developed in a very
different culture. In todays world it is unied culture that has become the
myth.
As the years have passed, Farzeen has made a point of avoiding places of
sexual trafcking for his escapades, saying he doesnt like the way women have
no choice in what they do there, that in some way they remind him of himself
and the lack of choice he feels for what he has been given in life. He has married
his Iranian bride and brought her to the States, although he says she is stupid
and uncultured, she has crooked teeth and needs them xed. She is fat. She
doesnt get manicures. Again we are in the realm of sadomasochism, a way he
feels that he is bad so that which he is connected to must also be bad, the way
he projects his disgust of himself and what he does into the women he is with.
One night my husband and I are attending the theatre when we run into
Farzeen and his wife, a slender petite woman texting on her I-Phone, oval face,
small features and to my eyes as well as my husbands, stunning. Farzeen asks
if he can introduce us.
How many people are really in the consulting room? His family is clearly
there; his wife and the women he has relations with; his cultures; his history
Caught between cultures 641
and relationship to money. And my history, my cultures, my relationship to
money and my husband is there as well. The next session when Farzeen tells
me how ugly his wife is I say that I know beauty is an individual matter of
perception, but I thought her attractive; and my husband, well, he thought her
beautiful. It is a deliberate move on my part, informed in part by that haunting
sense of disgust in the countertransference, a way of taking his wife out of his
view of himself and her as bad, disgusting, an attempt to give him back some
of the projections she carries: an effort at linking his Iranian culture with the
Western culture we share and overtly saying that another man, my husband,
appreciates what he has.
Slowly Farzeen begins to talk more with his wife, to take walks with her
even ending his liaisons with other women for a time, and then abruptly quitting
our work together. His father has started a new business venture so there is no
money.
At our last session Farzeen cries, saying he has failed me. He is giving his
money to his father, living in his parents house with his Iranian bride. He
does not have the apartment of his own that he believes I value. But this was
always his dilemma. He was going to fail someone, and there are all those
values projected on to, into me. I ask him if he has failed himself, and he
hesitates before he answers. I dont know, he says. At least not any more than
I had already.
As I listen I think of how the essence of identity for those such as him and
me is a certain awareness that we could be inhabiting another space, could be
thinking different thoughts, could be with other people. To be caught between
cultures is in some ways always to be between, to claim an allegiance but know
that allegiance for what it is, a slippery temporal designation that changes with
luck or hurricanes or a turn of the economy.
And when I ask Farzeen about including his story in presentations I might
do, he leans his head back, laughs. You Americans he says. All this me and
mine. You dont have to ask to use my story. No Iranian would do that. I tell
my story to you, but it is not my story. You use it how you will, and it will be
heard as others hear it, and they will use it too.
TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT
Dans notre monde de plus en plus mobile, beaucoup dentre nous sont pi eg es entre
plusieurs cultures plut ot que dans une seule. Nous sommes ` a cheval sur diff erents
groupes ethniques, raciaux, politiques, g eographiques et religieux, contraints de prendre
conscience de la nature pr ecaire de notre d enition de nous-m eme, consid erant
involontairement la nature construite de nos normes culturelles, incapables d eviter
davoir ` a choisir quel collectif honorer. Limpossibilit e de s eparer lindividuel du collectif
est un el ement fondateur pour travailler comme praticiens jungiens, mais un paradoxe
de lindividuation est de se lib erer du contr ole des normes collectives tout en vivant
642 Gretchen Heyer
simultan ement dans ces m emes normes. Dans un tel conit, il devient facile de laisser
echapper le fait que lorsque les normes que nous avons int egr es en notre for int erieur
proviennent de cultures extr emement diff erentes de celle dans laquelle nous vivons, la
cacophonie peut etre assourdissante. Dans cet article, nous nous appuierons sur des
th eoriciens postmodernes comme Derrida, Foucault et Irigaray en nous efforcant de r e-
imaginer le r ole de la culture dans le processus psychodynamique. Le cas dun homme
iranien musulman travaillant avec une analyste femme am ericaine, chr etienne sera utilis e
pour explorer la complexit e de la pr esence dune multitude de normes culturelles dans
le cabinet de consultation.
In unserer zunehmend mobilen Welt sind mehr von uns zwischen Kulturen gefangen
als in nur einer. Wir uberbr ucken unterschiedliche ethnische, rassische, politische,
geographische und religi ose Gruppen, was uns zum Gewahrwerden der instabilen
Natur unserer Selbstdenition zwingt, uns unfreiwillig die konstruierte Natur unserer
kulturellen Normen bestaunen l at, unf ahig ein Absch atzen zu vermeiden, welches
Kollektiv zu akzeptieren ist. Die Unm oglichkeit, das Individuum vom Kollektiv zu
trennen ist grundlegend f ur die Arbeit als jungianischer Behandler, aber ein Paradoxon
der Individuation macht sich von der Kontrolle durch die kollektiven Normen frei,
w ahrend gleichzeitig mit eben diesen Normen gelebt wird. In einem solchen Konikt
ubersieht man leicht die Tatsache, da, wenn die von uns inkorporierten Normen aus
Kulturen stammen, die sich von jener, in der wir leben, weitgehend unterscheiden,
die Kakophonie uberw altigend sein kann. In diesem Beitrag werden postmoderne
Theoretiker wie Derrida, Foucault und Irigaray zu einem Versuch herangezogen,
die Rolle der Kultur in psychodynamischen Prozessen neu zu denken. Der Fall
eines muslimischen Mannes aus dem Iran, der mit einer christlichen amerikanischen
Analytikerin arbeitet, dient zur Untersuchung der entstehenden Komplexit at, wenn eine
Vielzahl an kulturellen Normen im Behandlungsraum gegenw artig ist.
Nel nostro sempre pi ` u mobile mondo, molti di noi sono presi fra molte culture pi ` u
che da una sola. Ci muoviamo in gruppi diversi per etnia, razza politica, geograa e
religione, forzati a prendere coscienza della natura precaria di una denizione di s e,
ssando involontariamente la natura costruita delle nostre norme culturali, incapaci di
evitare di fare i conti con le scelte di quale sia il collettivo da onorare. Limpossibilit ` a
di separare lindividuale dal collettivo ` e fondamentale per lavorare come professionista
junghiano, ma il paradosso dellindividuazione sta nel liberarsi dal controllo delle norme
collettive pur vivendo contemporaneamente allinterno di tali norme. Diventa facile in
tale conitto non considerare il fatto che quando le norme che abbiamo incorporato
vengono da culture ampiamente diverse da quella nella quale viviamo, la cacofonia pu` o
essere schiacciante. In questo lavoro vengono presi in considerazioni teorici postmoderni
quali Derrida, Foucalt e Irigary nel tentativo di re-immaginare il ruolo della cultura nel
processo psicodinamico. Verr` a presentato il caso di un iraniano Muslim, che lavora
con una analista donna americana e cristiana, per tentare di comprendere quale sia
la complessit ` a quando una moltitudine di norme culturali sono presenti nella stanza
danalisi.
Caught between cultures 643
I ninomno: nco ooaoo n ooaoo :oonaino: :no :i, n ooaimnncfno cnoo:,
nnnuaonn:, ciooo, :oniyaifyno:y nocfuncfny, nonoan onoi iuioi-
anoo iyaifyo. ^i ucfnnyfi :on u:anuni:n afnnuocin:n, uconi:n,
iooiu|nuocin:n n oanino:ni:n iynnu:n, ninynonno oco:nunun co:nn-
foainocfi ocfocfnu cnooio cu:oonooaonnn; nonoaino n:nun nu cooynonno
n: numnx iyaifynix no:, :i no :ono: n:oonufi noooxon:ocfn niuncanfi,
iuioi nioo coaufi, iuioi ioaaoifnn nonouocfi. Hono::onnocfi ofoanfi
nnnnnyuainoo of ioaaoifnnnoio afo |ynu:onfuainun :uuuu, c iofooi :i
uoofuo: iui ininunni-nuifnin, onuio nuuoic nnnnnyunnn nicnooon-
uof of ionfoan ioaaoifnnnix no:, n n fo no no:n :ucfunanof nnfi nnyfn
afnx cu:ix no:. I afo: ion|anifo aoiio noianofi |uif, ufo ocan no:i,
iofoio :i nnionononuan, ofnocnfcn i iyaifyo, cnaino ofanuuimoicn
of foi, n iofooi :i nnno:, iuio|onnn cfunonnfcn omoao:animoi. I afoi
cfufio n oyy nnooiufi i non: fuinx nocf:oonncninx fooofnion, iui
)onu, +yio n Iniuo n nonifio noo-noauiunnn oan iyaifyi n
ncnxonnu:nuocio: nonocco. Iyof ucc:ofon cayuui uoofi :ynunni-
:ycyai:unnnu c u:oniuncioi xncfnunioi, nonmnnoi-unuanfnio:; nu afo:
nn:oo n nccaoyi caonnocfi cnfyunnn nncynfnnn :nonocfnu iyaifynix
no: n iuonnofo.
En nuestro mundo cada vez m as m ovil, muchos de nosotros estamos atrapados
entre culturas m as que pertenecer a una sola cultura. Nos encontramos a caballo
en diferentes grupos etnicos, raciales, polticos, geogr acos y religiosos, forzados
a una concientizaci on de la precaria naturaleza de nuestra denici on, con una
mirada involuntaria hacia la naturaleza construida por nuestras normas culturales,
imposibilitados para evitar confrontar las escogencias con las cuales honrar al colectivo.
La imposibilidad de separar lo individual de lo colectivo es fundamental en el trabajo
como terapistas Junguianos, una paradoja de la individuaci on es liberarse del control de
las normas colectivas mientras, simult aneamente, se vive dentro de esas mismas normas.
En tal conicto es f acil no reparar en el hecho de que cuando aquellas normas que
hemos incorporado provienen de culturas muy diferentes a la cultura en la cual vivimos,
la cacofona resultante puede ser abrumadora. En este artculo, las teoras postmodernas
como las de Derrida, Foucault e Irigaray se expondr an como un esfuerzo para re-imaginar
el rol de la cultura en el proceso psicodin amico. El caso de un hombre Musulm an iran
trabajando con una mujer, Analista y Cristiana, se usar a para ejemplarizar la complejidad
resultante cuando, en la consulta, est an presentes una multitud de patrones culturales.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to offer special thanks to Warren Colman for his close attention to the
ideas of this paper and for his and the readers insightful suggestions that have
much improved it.