Intersubjectivity, Transference, and the Cultural Third

How do clinicians identify with culture in the clinical encounter? Medical textbooks reify certain patient demographics without considering their salience to the clinician-patient interaction. Previous research on cultural transference and countertransference likewise presume that culture belongs exclusively to the clinician or the patient. More recent scholarship has departed from the supposed objectivity of each party toward the intersubjectivity of the relationship. This article modifies Ogden's notion of the analytic third to suggest the coconstruction of the cultural third for further explorations into shared and different cultural meanings within therapy.