Transcultural psychotherapy, says Rosalba Terranova-Cecchini, considers the reactions of the human body, the behavior of individuals and the works of man from the point of view of the ways of thinking and specific preferences handed down by the cultural heritage of the various communities. It enriches man's knowledge by adding the cultural factor to the biological and psychological factor. Transcultural psychotherapy correctly applies to the promotion and defense of health, understood as defined by the World Health Organization, not only as a bio-psychological state, but also social, and therefore deepens the culturally appropriate meaning of the organization of work, of the economy, of education, of law, of the way of living, of the forms of living together and of communicating in and outside institutions. The teaching that western scientists have drawn from other cultures has led to the "discovery" of our own cultures (social classes, emerging cultures, regional cultures and many other subcultures) or, as Americans say, to the discovery of white ethnic. Transcultural psychotherapy aims to bring out, within the therapeutic path, the patient's specific cultural peculiarities, intended simultaneously as a member of a specific socio-cultural system and as a unique individual who has selected, within the various opportunities provided by the cultural system, its own pool of artifacts (Inghilleri, 2009) for the construction of its identity. In this process of re-discovery of the individual and specific culture of the patient, a process of self-re-signification becomes possible as well as the discovery of the patient's own resources and of his socio-cultural network, resources that can be used to promote the achievement of one state of better balance of the patient himself.
Conducting psychotherapeutic work on a cross-cultural basis also means conducting it on an equal footing between user and therapist. The cross-cultural relationship between patient and therapist is therefore the founding element of the psychotherapeutic process, and its first tool. Within it arise the opportunities to bring out the founding cultural elements for the patient, and the origin of his suffering. The transcultural methodology enables us to cross cultures, communicate "through" them. For the psychotherapist and the doctor, cross-cultural training, contrary to what is proposed by the ethnopsychiatric model, means increasing the hermeneutic capacity with respect to those who require its intervention, acquiring specific skills with respect to understanding and analyzing the culture of patients without having to undertake paths specific knowledge of each single culture encountered.