Routledge Psychoanalysis in an Age of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization

Psychoanalysis in an Age of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization 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 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. Here, Neil Altman shows how these areas of study and practice require and enrich each other - the field of psychoanalysis benefits by engaging marginalized communities; community-based clinical work benefits from psychoanalytic concepts, while all forms of clinical work benefit from awareness of culture. Including reports of clinical experiences and programmatic developments from around the world, its international scope explores the operation of culture and cultural differences in conceptions of mental health. In addition the 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. As a unique examination of current mental health work, this book will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, community-based mental health workers, and students in Cultural Studies. Neil Altman is a psychoanalytic psychologist, Visiting Professor at Ambedkar University of Delhi, India, and faculty and supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute. He is an Honorary Member of the William Alanson White Society and Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Author of The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2010) Review "Altman’s book will help clinicians free themselves up to deal with the practicalities of situations… all practitioners interested In the transformation of health care systems will be informed by this book and find it enjoyable reading." – Rebecca C. Curtis, PSycCRITQUES Some might think that psychoanalysis has become an elitist activity – only available to the financially privileged, cut off from the pressing concerns of the majority of those needing help. Neil Altman is a psychoanalyst who would agree…. If any counsellor or psychotherapist is tempted to think that, because ‘psychoanalysis’ is not their field, they can dissociate themselves from Altman’s critique, they are mistaken. This is a book for all of us.- Chris Rose, psychotherapist, in Therapy Today Neil Altman’s Psychoanalysis in an Age of Accelerating Cultural Change is a must read for all students of the mental health field, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, mental health professionals, and to anyone in interested in the current state and radical transformation of our health care system. Altman has been a pioneer in exploring and teaching a generation of psychotherapists how to utilize the insights of psychoanalysis for populations who have not heretofore received its benefits, those in our inner cities, the poor, and racial and cultural minorities. In his new book he pushes his teachings further, bringing into the conversation his expertise in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, community-based clinical work, cultural studies, all informed by his important critique of globalization and free market capitalism. Freud and others have c