Abstract Background. Globalization and migration trigger reflections on Cultural Identity (CI) that are salient for cultural psychiatry. Clinicians’ CIs–the sum of family attachments and social belonging–are crucial aspects of helping relationships that must be acknowledged and well-integrated when working with families across cultures. Aims. This workshop examines clinicians’ CI across time: (1) origins of CI, grounded in family and social relationships; (2) current commitments and relationships that confer lives and careers with meaning; and (3) CI projected into the future–what is stable and what is subject to change. Clinicians must understand changes over time of their CIs to accompany complex CIs of migrants in flux. Such exercises aim to help clinicians to identify their own CIs which may differ significantly across cultures. Key transdisciplinary ideas will be introduced to offer reflective weight and practical pathways for exploring CI: (1) the notion of “relational self” that situates the self through social relationships; (2) “making meaning” and “narrative resources”; and (3) “commitments” and “final vocabularies” versus “liquid modernity.” Methods. Workshop participants will be provided with short readings in advance covering the key ideas. After introducing the participants, the workshop begins with a theoretical overview, followed by experiential activities, centered on two CI Interviews (CI-Ints) conducted by workshop leaders with participants, each followed by a “reflecting team” dialogue with workshop participants. A group dialogue about CI and the overall experience of the CI-Ints will be followed by a wrap-up by the workshop leaders. Potential Outcomes. Through this workshop, participants will experience ways to examine the complexity and nuances of their CIs and integrate them into their own cultural-clinical encounters with families. Discussion. Implications for the CI of health care workers as a tool for self-knowledge and working with families across cultural differences, including socio-cultural variables and professional and social commitments. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28632.11526

1. WORKSHOP
“A Person Is A Person
Through Other Persons”
How Culture & Identity
Are Constructed Through
Relationships & Belonging
Society for the Study of
Psychiatry & Culture (SSPC)
Virtual Conference
September 25, 2020

2. Workshop
Co-chairs
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD,
PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA, FCPA
Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
Cultural Family Therapist
Montreal, QC, Canada
Anjali Joseph, MA, RP, RMFT
Registered Marriage & Family Therapist
(RMFT)
Registered Psychotherapist (RP)
Ottawa, ON, Canada

3. Workshop Outline
 Welcome to workshop participants
 Introduction to Cultural Identity (CI)
 Presentation of CI narratives
 Invitation to participants to present their CIs
 Reflections

4. Introduction to
Cultural Identity (CI)

5. Cultural Identity
 Cultural identity is the identity or
feeling of belonging to a group
 It is part of a person's self-conception
and self-perception and is related to
nationality, ethnicity, religion, social
class, generation, locality or any kind of
social group that has its own
distinct culture

6. I. The Relational Self
 Based on personality and social
psychology and social psychiatry
 The relational self refers to aspects of
the self associated with one’s
relationships with significant others
(e.g., family of origin, friends,
romantic partners)

7. II. “Making Meaning”
Perhaps the biggest “change” necessary in therapy is
to enlarge our capacity to make meaning
We may need to (re)signify our lives rather than
change them in some instrumental way
What do we need to make sense of our lives?
We need acts of meaning and the narrative
resources to enact them in our lives
— V Di Nicola, Letters to a Young Therapist, p. 203

8. The End of
Meta Narratives
(Change)
– Haitian artist Philippe Dodard

9. “Narrative Resources”
Narrative and narrative resources are the vehicles
for socialization
We need narrative resources to develop our
expressive capacities
— V Di Nicola, Letters to a Young Therapist, p. 205

10. III. ”Liquid Modernity”
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017)
 Describes the present condition of the world in contrast to
the "solid" modernity that preceded it
 ”Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time
to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for
human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have
to find other ways to organize their lives.”
— Zygmunt Bauman (2007), Liquid Modernity
 Acknowledges that things are changing and in flux

11. “Final Vocabulary”
Humanist Richard Rorty (1931-2007)
 An ironist is someone who fulfils three conditions:
 “(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final
vocabulary she currently uses because she has been impressed by
other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books
she has encountered; (2) she realizes that arguments phrased in
her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these
doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she
does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others,
that it is in touch with a power, not herself.”
— Richard Rorty (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p.73.

12. Clinical Extensions:
A Relational Approach-Systems Perspective
Wholeness
 A recognition that the whole is more than the sum of its parts
 Involves relationships
 A recognition that we all belong to a larger system
Organization
 Rules of belonging
 Who is part of the system? Who is not?
 Rules of belonging
 Roles (behaving, function)
 Defines boundaries

13. Patterns (sequences)
 Recursion – relationships affect and
affected by other system parts and
relationships
 Circularity – a circular pattern we can
see through recursion
 Isomorphism – patterns occur at multiple
levels of a system simultaneously
A Relational Approach-Systems
Perspective (continued)

14. Presentation of CI
Narratives

15. “From Family Myths
to Social Solidarity”
Vincenzo Di Nicola

16. “Integrating Gifts”
Anjali Joseph

17. Invitation to
Participants to
Present their CIs

18. Reflections

19. References
 Andersen SM, Chen S (2002). The relational self: An interpersonal social-cognitive
theory. Psychol Rev. Oct;109(4):619-45. doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.109.4.619
 Bauman Z (2007) Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
 Birhane A (2017). Descartes was wrong: ‘A person is a person through other persons.’
Aeon Magazine. Available from: https://aeon.co /essays /take-your-time-the-seven-
pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto
 Cowley SJ, Harvey MI (2016). The illusion of common ground. New Ideas in
Psychology, 42, 56-63.

20. References
 Di Nicola, V (2011). Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming
Community. New York, NY: Atropos Press.
 Di Nicola V (2019). “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psychiatry
manifesto for the 21st century. World Soc Psychiatry, 1(1): 8-21.
 Lee, RE, Nelson TS (2014). The Contemporary Relational Supervisor. New York:
Routledge Press.
 Phinney JS, Horenczyk G, Liebkind K, Vedder P (2001). Ethnic identity, immigration,
and well-being: An interactional perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 493-
510. https://doi.org /10.1111/0022-4537.00225

21. References
 Rorty R (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
 Trnka R, Poláčková Šolcová I, Tavel P. (2018) Components of cultural complexity
relating to emotions: A conceptual framework, New Ideas in Psychology, 51, 27–33.