Report on "American Me": A Therapeutic Perspective"American Me" is a fact-based fictional film starring and directed by Edward James Olmos. Released on the national theater circuit in 1992, "American Me" depicts the life of Rodolfo Cadena, a Carnal (gang member) of the La Eme prison gang, also known as the Mexican Mafia. Therapeutically addressing the salience and pervasiveness of gang membership, including its allure and reinforcements, would be a challenging task for any human services professional involving accuracy of assessment and effectiveness of treatment. However, trying to find and implement such therapeutic methods and procedures to achieve positive outcomes, while at the same time preserving Latino cultural identity and integrity, is precisely the purpose of this article. One of the parallel themes of “American Me” is that prisons are much more than warehouses. for the marginalized and harmful in society. They are, instead, recruiting stations and training camps for future generations of criminals and gang members. “American Me” reveals how a major portion of the crime syndicate came to be housed from “the inside,” from the many prison walls of the United States Department of Corrections (Baumgarten, 1992). Knowing the fate of Montoya Santana, the character played by Edward James Olmos, growing up and becoming a revered and lifelong member of the Mexican Mafia, including 18 years in Folsom Prison, requires the development of a comprehensive, if hypothetical, plan of intervention for human service. This hypothetical, culturally appropriate therapeutic intervention will take place when young (16 year old) Santana is first institutionalized in (juvie) the youth center... middle of paper... dual Human services needs would involve ideally not only cognitive, behavioral and emotional approaches, but also family and cultural ones. The potential for therapeutic success is based on the degree of effectiveness in all of these areas as the practitioner takes a holistic approach to Santana within the contexts of her external and internal environments. References: Atkinson, D.R. (2004), Counseling American minorities, 6th edition, Boston: McGraw-Hill Companies Baumgarten, M. (1992), American Me, Calendar: Film Listings, Austin Chronicle, Retrieved March 29, 2008 from: http: //www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Calendar/Film?Film= oid%3A139162Bohmer, P. (1998), African-Americans as an Internal Colony: The Theory of InternalColonialism, Retrieved March 29, 2008 from the UOP database, EBSCOhost: http://academic.evergreen.edu/b/bohmerp/internalcolony. htm