The author tells the story of her lifelong attempts to create a coherent, complex cultural identity from her family's multiple diaspora legacies, and the impact of these struggles on her personal and professional development. She emphasizes the intergenerational conflicts created by the sociopolitical circumstances of her generation's Cuban immigration experience, and progressive attempts to include her Cuban identity in her sense of self. An unexpected lesson in the politics and history of psychoanalysis, itself an immigrant movement that abandoned its social conscience to survive in exile, catalyzed a return to Cuba and a greater inclusion of its social values in her personal and professional lives. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

culture and professional development complex cultural identity

cultural anthropology Cultural Diversity social psychology conflict Social Identification human Cuba ethnology Intergenerational Relations human relation United States career mobility Humans self concept Article migration Prejudice politics Emigration and Immigration Conflict (Psychology) social behavior