The Colors of Childhood: Separation-Individuation across Cultural Racial and Ethnic Diversity (Margaret S. Mahler)

About this book

How does culture affect child-rearing practices? How do factors such as poverty ethnic difference racial minority status and having immigrant parents alter the experience of a growing child? Are there culturally distinct sub-groups within the African-American population? How ubiquitous are psychoanalytically derived schedules of personality development? In what form and to what extent are transference and countertransference affected by such racial ethnic and economic issues? In this volume eight distinguished psychoanalysts (including some belonging to ethnic and racial minorities) attempt to answer these questions. They provide illuminating details of child-rearing practices in African-American Indian and Japanese families. They interweave mythological legacies historical background ethnographic data and clinical observations into a rich tapestry of knowledge empathy and understanding. They try to tease out the variables of socioeconomic class from the issue of race and the ambiguities consequent upon raising children in a new and unfamiliar land from the ordinary and inevitable conflicts between generations.