Decolonization, Polarization, Psychoanalysis, Privilege: Toward a Cosmopolitan and Culturally Intelligent Psychotherapist

Abstract

ContextGlobalization and ability to communicate freely with anyone in the world brings people together in ways that never happened before. Multiculturality cannot be reduced to a process of ‘melting pot’, where the “small” (colonized) cultures are absorbed by the dominant ones. This process is the result of binary thinking, and it simultaneously casts doubt over the methodology, epistemology and training of psychotherapists – and particularly psychoanalysts – in academic environments. ObjectivesThis article intends to demonstrate the benefits of a non-dogmatic approach to psychoanalysis, founded on the principles of decolonization and elimination of binary thinking, leading to a cosmopolitan psychotherapy, which has to include a plurality of concepts and theoretical orientation. MethodThe article employs a qualitative demonstration, in which the author relies on his experience as a clinician and university professor, as well as on a series of philosophical and epistemological critical thinking concepts: binary (polarized) thinking, colonialism, fundamentalist individualism, privilege and its connection to politics and economics, and cultural intelligence. ResultsBinary (polarized) thinking – a primal, yet efficient and convenient, way of viewing the world, related to our ‘reptilian’ brain – is responsible for our inability to use a larger palette of options and choices, and integrate them into a functional whole. Binary thinking seems to be correlated to radical (fundamentalist) individualism, as well as with a neoliberal, colonial mentality, which are adopted rapidly by many other social systems (nations, cultures), in order to remain competitive economically at a global level. Cosmopolitan psychotherapy aims at decolonizing both psychoanalysis and our psyche, using the intercultural intelligence model, and employing a multimodal, nuanced, culturally mindful psychotherapy. The result is a unified mind-body approach, where research and evidence-based practices do not reduce themselves to a medical model, based on pathology. ConclusionWorking with the psyche inside the individual has to include an equal attention to a bidirectional relationship with the collective (social, professional and personal relationships, as well as to the environment (ecopsychology). Equally important is to focus on the somatic memory, where recent research demonstrates the way trauma produces physiological responses that require a different approach than talk psychotherapy. An option may be psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy of trauma, which in the United States are currently in the third stage trial by the FDA (federal department of Food and Drug Administration) for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.