From 1914 to the late 1960s, large numbers of Australian Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and placed in institutional foster care. Recently, attention has focused on the long-term mental health consequence of these forced separations. We describe the symptomatology of a group of nine adult members of the Australian Aboriginal ‘Stolen Generations’ selected for psychiatric examination for legal purposes. Interviews were conducted to Present Mental State Examination standard, using a culturally sensitive reflective listening mode. Interviewees also completed the Goldberg Shorter Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire (GSADQ). The clinical picture shared by all interviewees was consistent with contemporary understanding of the harmful impact of chronic trauma on the developing self. All reported high levels of distress on the GSADQ (means: Anxiety 8.6, Depression 7.8, total 16.4). The symptomatology fit diagnostic constructs of ‘complex PTSD, depressive type,’ with disorders of self-organization, and marked somatizing features. Specific issues of cultural identity conflict were also salient. Indigenous Australian cultures view links to kinship networks ( walytja), land ( ngura), and myth and ritual ( tjukurpa), as central to emotional and psychological well-being. All the members of our sample felt that it was precisely these linkages that had been attacked by the process of removal and deculturation, and that this was the cause of many of their problems. We also consider the larger question ‘how can this happen in a liberal society?’ in terms of Bion’s notions of ‘attacks on linking.

This article reviews some contributions of the Jungian analytic tradition to indigenous ethnopsychiatric thought in Australia. The authors review Jung's writings on Aboriginal culture, then describe some of their own fieldwork findings. Acknowledging that the contemporary post-Jungian tradition is pluralist, they propose a notion of 'Jungian sensibility.' They discuss some of the ways in which the Jungian sensibility might contribute positively to Aboriginal mental health, with especial reference to theories of subjectivity, and note that some Aboriginal people find the Jungian world-view very compatible with the Aboriginal one.

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This article is in three parts. The first is an introduction to the cultural context of indigenous therapies in Australia and some traditional healers, known as Ngangkari, involved in its continuing presence. The second part comprises a discussion of the term “psycho‐therapy” in its broadest sense, followed by an outline of the methodology of the “psychotherapy” of the Ngangkari, in which links are made between the concepts used by Ngangkari and traditional Western terms of psyche and therapeia. The third and final part leads into an extract from the speech given by the author at the 2011 Sigmund Freud Award ceremony at the World Congress for Psychotherapy held in Sydney in August 2011. The thrust of the article is to acknowledge and respect the long lineage of healing practices which have been maintained among indigenous people in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and at the same time acknowledging the Western lineage of scientific practice. The article highlights the sustained incremental effort at collaboration between the two paradigms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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