A Psychiatrist Reflects on the Meaning of Social Responsibility

Abstract

The author recounts some of her experiences during 4 months of her medical training working in a hospital in Tanzania, during which she discovered how cultural differences influenced her frame of reference. This led her to decide to become a psychiatrist who focused on the broader context of health and sickness and on the power of people to create satisfactory lives for themselves. This article considers the development of her ideas around cultural and genetic differences and the usefulness of transactional analysis in psychiatric diagnoses and psychotherapy, especially with regard to issues of inequality. The “I’m OK, You’re OK” paradigm so central to transactional analysis (Berne, 1966; Steiner, 1974) implies a social responsibility to make ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us as healthy as possible.