[Transcultural aspects of the clinical-psychiatric pictures of foreign workers (guest workers) and their significance for neurological practice].

Referring to a previous clinical and sociopsychiatric investigation on 130 foreign workers, the transcultural psychiatric factors determining forms and contents were studied. It is stressed that remains of magic thinking and rigid tribe-centered sociocultural structures are the main factors, in addition to the beginning of the loosening of these structures accompanied by initial assimiltion of occidental ways of life in the homeland, and integrational crises through collision of Old and New after immigration. Atypical psychosis, outweighting affective and somatic factors, obliteration of the limits between classic etiological units, and the possibility of confounding magic contents with psychosis are illustrated by case histories. New criteria for diagnosis and therapy of foreign workers are suggested.