Encountering the “Other”: Reflections on Skoufalos’ “Couples Therapy: A Painful Hour, a Pained History”

Abstract

Psychoanalysts do not usually focus on culture or cultural differences when they seek to explain or understand the behavior of individuals or couples in treatment. In this paper, I explore the way in which Nicoletta Skoufalos faced a cultural dilemma, finding herself “othering” the Jewish couple who were her patients. Her feelings were in contradistinction to her humanitarian values, which created anxiety. Skoufalos tried to assuage her anxiety by finding many points of similarity between her and the couple; however, the reasons why she needed to “other” were not interrogated or addressed because she lacked a theoretical framework about culture and its influence on subjectivity to help her frame her clinical dilemma. I suggest that there is an urgent need for psychoanalysts to theorize about the ways in which social and political experiences influence the individual’s subjectivity, and to address the question of how we can learn to have direct discussions with our patients about cultural differences and how they affect treatment.