This article examines basic psychoanalytic principles and their applications to the understanding and treatment of individuals not historically included in psychoanalytic formulations. It looks at the impact of culture, ethnicity, and class, but particularly poverty. The hope is to develop successful application of psychoanalytic theory and technique to the psychological problems of people living in poverty. Careful examination of their psychological reality may offer a unique opportunity to broaden vision of assessment to what constitutes dysfunctional condition, the concept of adaptation, the development of the working alliance, the nature of resistance and transference reactions, and the like. The analyst's personal discomfort, motivations, and stubborn adherence to specific theoretical and technical stances are considered the most damaging obstacles in this endeavor.Contemporary psychoanalysis has been extending its reach to understand the impact of culture on both theory and practice. Thus, significant consideration is beginning to be given to the roles of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in the formulation of psychoanalytic hypotheses and the practice of psychoanalytic principles. This is in contrast to a manifestly pancul-
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