Abstract
Asian-Indian individuals and families who immigrate to the United States often find themselves caught between differing values and cultural patterns of their home country and their adopted country. While this experience itself is painful at various levels of life, it becomes all the more painful when a family experiences this difference between two or more generations living under the same roof. Therefore, the purpose of this book is to offer a pastoral psychotherapeutic model for intervention with Asian-Indian individuals and families caught between two conflicting cultures, namely the Indian and American/Western cultures. It is an undertaking that calls for a liberative pastoral care praxis.
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Notes
- 1.
One of the major sources used in this research is Jung Yung Lee ’s Marginality : The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995).
- 2.
Sudhir Kakar , The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India . (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 1.
- 3.
Lee , Marginality , 33.
- 4.
K. Ahmed, “Adolescent Development for South Asian American Girls,” in Emerging Voices: South Asian American Women Redefine Self, Family and Community , ed. S. R. Gupta (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999), 37–49. See also S. Jambunathan , “Comparison of Parenting Attitudes among Five Ethnic Groups in the United States,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies Vol. 31, no. 4, (Autumn, 2000): 395–406.
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M. K. Aravamudan , “Conflict Continuity and Change: Indian Americans Negotiate Ethnic Identity and Gender through Decisions about Dating and Marriage ” (PhD diss., Northwestern University 2003).
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Henry J. Nouwen , “Anton T. Boison and Theology through Living Human Documents ,” Pastoral Psychology 19, no. 7 (September, 1968): 49.
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Ram Gidoomal , “Displacement: Effect of Immigration on Families ,” in Caring for the South Asian Souls , eds. Thomas Kulanjiyil and T. V. Thomas (Bangalore: Primalogue Publishing & Media, 2010).
- 8.
The term “acculturation ” is used in this book to refer to the process by which persons learn aspects of a culture that is not theirs whereby they learn to incorporate some of its aspects that will enable them to survive in their new environment. See also the definition by George K. Hong and Mary Anna Domokos-Cheng Ham in Psychotherapy and Counseling with Asian American Clients: A Practical Guide (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2001), 37.
- 9.
The term “assimilation ” in this book refers to persons giving up their original culture and accepting the dominant culture. See also Hong and Ham, 36–37.
- 10.
Enculturation refers to the process of learning aspects of a culture from one’s own peers that allows the immigrant learning to feel that they are doing it in community and as a way of enhancing their identity .
- 11.
The phrase “death of family or home ” is used to indicate the end of transmitting or passing on to their children the cultural values , beliefs , and practices that the first-generation parents hold so dearly and dutifully. For them, home means their life with their family members as that is who they are, culturally.
- 12.
M. Zhou , “Growing Up American: The Challenges Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants,” Annual Review of Sociology 23, no. 1 (August, 1997): 6395; J. Bacon , “Constructing Collective Ethnic Identities: The Case of Second Generation Asian Indians,” Qualitative Sociology 22, no. 2 (Spring, 1999): 141–160.
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Raymond Scupin , Ethnicity in Race and Ethnicity (Englewood Cliffs: NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 69.
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John W. Berry , Jean S. Phinney , David L. Sam , and Paul Vedder , eds., Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition: Acculturation, Identity and Adaptation Across National Contexts (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006).
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V.R. Gaikward , The Anglo Indians: A study in the Problems and Process Involved in Emotional and Cultural Integration (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1965), 5.
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Jean Phinney , “Ethnic Identity and Acculturation ,” in Acculturation: Advances in Theory, Measurement and Applied Research, eds. K. Chun and G. Marin (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2003), 63. Also see Phinney, J . and Alipuria, L. “Ethnic Identity in Older Adolescents from Four Ethnic Groups .” Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore (1987), 36.
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Jean Phinney , “Ethnic Identity in Adolescents and Adults: Review of Research ,” Psychological Bulletin 108, no. 3 (November, 1990): 499–514.
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Phinney, “Ethnic Identity and Acculturation ,” 63.
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Joanne Nagel , “Constructing Ethnicity : Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture ,” Social Problems 41, no. 1 (February, 1994): 153.
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Parmatma Saran , The Asian Indian Experience in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1985).
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V. Rao , S. Channabassavanna , and R. Parthasarathy , “Transitory Status Image of Working Women in Modern India,” Indian Journal of Social Work 45, no. 2 (1984): 198–202.
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Jacob, V. (2017). Introduction and Overview. In: Counseling Asian Indian Immigrant Families. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64307-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64307-6_1
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