As psychiatry has developed it has proved to be susceptible to the influence of contemporary social and political mores. With its origins in 19th-century Europe, psychiatry evolved as an ethnocentric body of knowledge, the vehicle of implicit and overt racism. Originally published in 1988 this author, however, saw no reason why the contemporary psychiatrist should not challenge this ethnocentrism. Fernando provides a critical account of the development of psychiatry in relation to its cultural context and then examines contemporary practice of the time in the light of this development.