Psychoanalytic theory and technique have rarely addressed clinical work in inner city public clinics, much less the complex social issues revolving around race, culture, and social class that arise in this setting. In The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through a Psychoanalytic Lens, Neil Altman undertakes this challenging task.

In so doing, he takes psychoanalysis to its margins: to the people excluded by traditional theory and practice, the very people made peripheral by society at large. Just as psychoanalytic treatment seeks to foster personal integration of the psychically marginal, so Altman seeks to identify, explore, and transcend the exclusionary boundaries of traditional psychoanalytic practice.