The Preservation and Transmission of Cultural Values and Ideals: Challenges Facing Immigrant Families

Abstract

At this time in the history of psychoanalysis, few would question the influence of cultural factors on one’s psychic life. This influence is most obviously present in the lives of immigrant families. This article focuses on some of the issues related to the efforts immigrant parents make to transmit cultural values they had acquired in the old country while their adolescent children are exposed to a very different cultural value system in the United States. Following the theoretical discussion that cultural factors (values and ideals) have in psychic life, two clinical examples draw attention to the way cultural issues may play a role in the treatment of symptomatic adolescents in immigrant families.