ABSTRACT
I began this issue with the premise that family members are often the first people we know who are members of our ethnic group. It is family who are often the first bearers of the culture that we come to identify as a core part of who we are or who we are not and they teach us by both word, example, and in the dynamics of our relationships with them what we know about our culture (and others) in our early formative years. However, the personalities of those family members, their coping styles, and the history of psychodynamics in their own personal relationships, both personal and cultural past are mixed within what they present to us as our “culture.” As we mature, extended family and community provide us with additional information about ourselves as well as about what our cultural identifications are or can be. Depending on the nature of our community, particularly if it is under siege, it can also provide a positive or negative mirror where we can see a range of images reflected back that is alleged to represent who or what we are and what we can become. As therapists we know from our work with clients that those images reflected back to many people were not always accurate representations of who they really were or could be at that time, whether those reflected images came from the social environment or loved and trusted figures in their lives or both.
