Covering The Coverage: Latinos Are Adverse To Therapy Because They're Already So In Touch With Their Feelings
Writer Daniel Cubias wrote an essay for The Huffington Post on the way Latinos view therapy. According to Cubias — and his mother — Latinos have historically and culturally favored music and art as a means of therapy, as opposed to psychoanalysis:
Given the choice between expressing our turmoil with epic novels or dropping on a couch to discuss how our fathers never loved us, we will start scribbling away. If we can get it all out with some angry song or wild dance, we will skip hyperanalyzing the Freudian reasons that we forgot our spouse’s birthday. And we would much rather create a deranged painting or warped sculpture than pay $150 an hour to hear a bald man ask, “How did it make you feel to be picked last for the kickball team?”
Think about it. What is the likelihood of ever seeing a Woody Allen movie in which a Latino kvetches to his psychologist?
Cue brakes. We’re not sure we’re feeling this. Let’s lie back on this couch and think about this for a moment. Yeah, no, we’re definitely not feeling this at all.
Not because it is or isn’t true (For the record: Our father is a psychologist and most of his patients happen to be Latino.), but because it seems to bolster the stereotype that Latinos are earthy, passionate people who experience the world from the neck down - which is entirely fabricated and one-dimensional depiction of a very large and varied group of people. It downplays analytical thought and intellect by focusing entirely on feelings and creativity. Not that these are negative attribute by any means, but they do serve to create an incomplete picture, a caricature, of Latinos.
Cubias does, however, attempt to find a basis for his assertions in some sort of tangible cultural or historical grounding:
I don’t know of any Hispanics who have benefited from therapy. Maybe it’s class thing, because many Hispanics are frankly too broke to splurge on something as trivial as their mental health. Or maybe Latino culture prioritizes self-expression over introspection. Or perhaps we just have a surplus of writers and artists with a backlog of violent revolutions and colorful family members to supply acres of good material.
But we can’t help but wonder if that is really a fair or realistic portrayal of Latino artists as opposed to artists of any other background, that fit under any other label. We’re not sure if these supposes that non-Latino writers and painters are somehow out of keeping with their culture, whatever that means. Does a violent revolution, decades past, feature into every poem created, half-formed thought mumbled or math equation performed by a Latino? And what if our families aren’t colorful, but washed over in White? What if they hum Chopin over coffee instead of Celia over cafesito? What if they hum both?
Or, you know. Maybe we’re just over-analyzing the whole thing.
Jung Couldn’t Play the Guitar [The Huffington Post]
9
- Managing Editor
Daniel Mauser
- Editor
Cindy Casares
- Associate Editor
Alex Alvarez
- Contributing Editors
Gabriel Caro - Camilla Rowan
- Video Editor
Marcelo Cunning
Argentina has one of the largest number of psychoanalysts per capita. Villa Freud in Buenos Aires, based around Plaza Güemes, is a residential area known for its high concentration of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. Some of the top family therapists in the world have Hispanic or Latin backgrounds—-In my own practice I not only work with Latinos but also Latinos who are artists—so I think Daniel Cubias might be exhibiting some resistance to letting his inner child come out and play in therapy.
Posted by Gay Shrink | July 02, 2008
Seriously, is Cubias Latino or KKK?
Posted by El Bulto | July 02, 2008
it seems to bolster the stereotype that Latinos are earthy, passionate people who experience the world from the neck down - which is entirely fabricated and one-dimensional depiction of a very large and varied group of people. It downplays analytical thought and intellect…
Spot on.
But another reason therapists are sometimes useless? They can be part of the privileged, dominant culture you despise are estranged from. In the first meeting I had with one therapist, I told her one way in which she won’t be fully available to me is because she isn’t Latina. There will always be a level of translation that I will have to do for her. (Finding a good therapist is difficult. Having to constantly deal with someone’s unfamiliarity of you and imposed cultural stereotypes is more work than I’m willing to do when I’m a poor college student paying for it.)
Anyway, she didn’t care. She glossed over the issue and changed the subject. Nice way to fight the stereotype that therapists are useless and just sit there and collect checks.
Posted by Maria_Elena18 | July 02, 2008
*despise was supposed to have a strikeout going through it.
Posted by Maria_Elena18 | July 02, 2008
Gay Shrink is spot on - the ratio of therapists to city dwellers in BA is 1 to 30. Every Argentine seems to be head shrinking. And I totally agree with the commenter above, cultural relevance is important. I had a way better experience with my Brooklyn hood therapist than with the floofy, bugie Argentine disciple of Freud I went to here in BA. She didn’t get my neurosis the way BK did.
Posted by Evie E | July 02, 2008
Yeah but are Argentines really Latinos? heh. just kidding. I hear the main reason so many of them are in therapy is because they can’t STAND the fact that they are living in Latin America. They all want to be European and, in fact, are largely descended from Europeans. there’s like all this cultural identity shit they’re dealing with.
Posted by La Chismolera | July 02, 2008
The therapist I saw was not Latina, and adhered to the dominant thinking in this country, and because of that, she did not get me. At all. I was having major readjustment issues — I moved to Hoboken, New Jersey after three years in Madrid. That would be traumatic for ANYONE. The lady I saw thought there was something wrong with me, not because I was having trouble dealing with the changes, but because I had made a conscious decision to move to Madrid. Like no one in their right mind would want to live anywhere but the U.S.of A.
Posted by souldejayuya | July 02, 2008
these responses kind of remind me of that old joke about the light bulb and therapy.
Q: How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the bulb has got to really WANT to change
Maria_Elena18 and souldejayuya both went in with pre conceived notion that no one was going to be able to help them because they were Latinas and that because they didn’t think like them, there were not going to help them. well, that’s not how it works. you go in with the need to be helped not combative and holding on to deep seated anger ( or is that deep couched?). if you go in with a bitchy and holier than thou attitude and don’t provide the tools to help you, then it won’t work. i didn’t think therapy was going to work for me but when i finally sat down and heard myself say things that i hadn’t really thought about out loud, it opened me up to a whole new me.
sitting there, already entrenched into the notion that NO ONE is going to help me because THEY ARE NOT ME is fruitless and a waste of their time and yours. these people are strangers that are trying to get to know you so that you, eventually, get to know you.
Posted by el smrtmnky | July 02, 2008
I see resistance to or acceptance of therapy as having somewhat to do with class and education divisions. Having not always lived with my own family, and being raised in custodial homes, I had the chance to observe working class, middle, and upper middle class culture from the inside.
It seems to me that the working classes see therapy more as a pointless and dangerous opening up of “Pandora’s box.” The more educated working class people, however, are more open to it. Middle and upper middle class people seem a lot more understanding of therapy’s purpose. I am Latina by birth and I haven’t seen any divisions along ethnic lines. But then, there’s a lot I haven’t seen…
Posted by RuthHenriquez | July 05, 2008