First published in International Journal of Positive Psychotherapy and Research. Issue 1 (2011)

Transcultural difficulties – in private life, work and politics – are growing increasingly important today. Given the way society is developing now, the solution of transcultural problems will create one of the major tasks of the future. While people of differing cultural circles used to be separated by great distances and came into contact only in unusual circumstances, technical innovations have dramatically increased the opportunities for contact in our time. Just by opening the morning paper, we step out of our own living space and make contact with the problems of people from other cultural circles and groups. Generally we interpret these events in ways that we’ve grown up with. We are ready to criticize, damn or make fun of them because of their supposed backwardness, naiveté, brutality or incomprehensible lack of concern. In the transcultural process we deal with the concepts, norms, values, behavioral patterns, interests and viewpoints that are valid in a particular culture.