Transcultural Histories of Psychotherapies: A History of Migrants and Refugees? (Part II). Introduction

The history of psychotherapy constitutes an extremely problematic area, not least because the very identification of the field of study is not self-evident. The concept of psychotherapy itself has received different definitions, which illuminate partly different aspects of it. For some years now, a group of scholars led by Sonu Shamdasani has been investigating one of the most complex issues related to this kind of study, the relationship between different psychotherapies and the cultural context in which they take root. In order to define the problematic nature of this relationship, the group prefers to speak of ‘trans-cultural histories of psychotherapies’, emphasising from the very name the many voices of the contributors’ paths. This special section of the European Yearbook of the History of Psychology completes the publication of a series of articles on the theme of how psychotherapy, during its evolution, has been brought to and changed in different countries by refugees and migrants.