Combining psychoanalytic theory with clinical data, this book explores the psychological effects of immigration on Asians and Asian Americans.
Alan Roland, using his unique cross-cultural experience in India, Japan, and the United States, argues that in a global age where peoples and cultures have traversed the world as never before, there are new journeys to foreign selves – selves that until very recently remained foreign to Western psychology. Spanning the worlds of culture, psychology, and psychopathology, the book also provides fascinating insights into the concept of the spiritual self.
Journeys to Foreign Selves brings together extended case studies from New York, India, Japan, China, and South Korea. By integrating socio-cultural and socio-historical factors with the psychological, it opens up new possibilities in the study of Indian and Japanese personality and culture.
Written in lucid style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of psychology, psychoanalysis, mental health, anthropology, sociology and philosophy, particularly those interested in the South Asian and East Asian Diasporas.
“Alan Roland is unique among scholars working on the psychology of the Indian self for locating his work in a truly comparative perspective…this book should reconfirm his reputation as one of the most sensitive cross-cultural psychoanalysts of our times.”
— Ashis Nandy, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi