Addressing the repressed needs of the Arabic client.

Abstract

In comparison to families in Western society, the traditional Arabic family plays a relatively greater role in providing support for adult progeny. This serves to condition adult offspring to continue to comply with the will and values of the family. Therefore, in exchange for familial support, Arabic individuals learn to repress authentic needs and emotions, and within that process they relinquish the need for self-actualization. Arabic society discourages individualism and opposes self-actualization by means of simultaneous punishment and moralization. Thus, there is a relatively greater development of the social value system (or superego) and comparatively less development of the self (or ego). In comparison to Western society, Arabic individuals continue to experience greater oppression during adulthood. Given these cultural differences, the processes of reliving and activating repressed needs and emotions, which ultimately serves to promote self-actualization, will transform intrapsychic conflicts into interpersonal and social ones. Thus, personal actions typically encouraged during Western psychotherapy are likely to produce significant social oppression. Indeed, promoting awareness of repressed needs and emotions often leads the Arabic client to become more helpless, because such wishes will rarely be socially sanctioned or satisfactorily fulfilled. Therefore, when addressing repressed needs and emotions in psychotherapy, ego strength, cultural identity, and degree of strictness of the client's family of origin must be considered.