Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves presents a unique approach to understanding the varied and multi-layered experience of immigration, exploring how social, cultural, political, and historical contexts shape the psychological experience of immigration, and with it the encounter between foreign-born patients and their psychotherapists. Beltsiou brings together a diverse group of contributors, including Ghislaine Boulanger, Eva Hoffman and Dori Laub, to discuss their own identity as immigrants and how it informs their work. They explore the complexity and the contradictions of the immigration process - the tension between loss and hope, future and past, the idealization and denigration of the other/stranger, and what it takes to tolerate the existential dialectic between separateness and belonging. Through personal accounts full of wisdom and nuance, the stories of immigration come to life and become accessible to the reader. Intended for clinicians, students, and academics interested in contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives on the topic of immigration, this book serves as a resource for clinical practice and can be read in courses on psychoanalysis, cultural psychology, immigrant studies, race and ethnic relations, self and identity, culture and human development, and immigrants and mental health.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of psychoanalytic work with immigrant mothers, fathers, and their children, combining clinical examples and contemporary research to explore ways in which psychoanalysts can work and shape appropriate therapeutic settings. Written by an international range of contributors, from Europe, the US, and the Middle East, the chapters examine how psychoanalysts, especially when they too are immigrants, can best support those in a transcultural situation against the backdrop of increasing migration from conflict, persecution, war, or poverty. They share a clinical and societal commitment. While showing how the existing literature on immigration focuses rightly on traumatic elements, the chapters in this text also demonstrate how creativity must be considered while shaping a psychoanalytic perspective. The text brings together case material and research to illuminate how the therapeutic and theoretical processes of psychoanalysis, at times combining anthropology and sociology, can lead to the construction of new therapeutic settings mostly for non-Western families in contexts of higher psychopathological risks: neo-natal period, international adoption, and social isolation. Written in a practical, accessible style, Parenthood and Immigration in Psychoanalysis is essential reading for practicing psychoanalysts, paediatricians, psychotherapists, and counsellors, as well as researchers and clinicians in a range of fields, including perinatal, sociology, cultural studies, and social work.
In this book Drs. Lesn and Rebeca Grinberg provide the first psychoanalytic study of both normal and pathological reactions to migration and to the special case of exile. Drawing on rich clinical material, on literature, and on myth, the Grinbergs discuss the relationship between migration and the language and age of the traveler; they consider its effects on the migrant's sense of identity; and they draw insightful analogies between the migratory experience and human development.
Immigration from one country to another is a complex psychological process with significant and lasting effects on an individual's identity. Even under the best circumstances, immigration is a traumatic occurence; like other traumas, it mobilizes a mourning process. It also offers renewed opportunity for psychic growth and alteration, and the mourning-liberation process transforms the immigrant's identity. In this book, this progression is highlighted along the dimensions of drives and affects, interpersonal and psychic space, temporality, and social affiliation. As the topics of identity and immigration are brought together in a deep and meaningful way, their clinical assessment and relevance are presented. Detailed guidelines are offered for conducting psychotherapy with immigrant patients, including child and family interventions. The specific dilemmas of the immigrant therapist are also explored, including linguistic differences, maintaining cultural neutrality and transference-countertransference issues.
Moving from one country to another causes a radical alteration of one's cultural and geophysical surround. Separation from friends and family, loss of valued possessions, and encountering new ways of living result in mental pain and disorienting anxieties. In Immigration and Acculturation, Salman Akhtar examines the traumatic impact of immigration and the acculturation process and the psychological defenses that are mobilized in the immigrant, including nostalgia and fantasies of return. Akhtar explores each aspect of an immigrant's life, shedding light on the complexities of work, friendship, sex, marriage, aging, religion, and politics, as well as showing how unresolved conflicts are passed on to the next generation. Akhtar provides first-hand accounts from immigrants from a variety of backgrounds and countries of origin, and he provides clinical strategies for working with immigrant and ethnically diverse patients and their offspring. Deftly synthesizing observations from psychoanalysis, anthropology, literature, history, and related disciplines in the humanities, Salman Akhtar elegantly elucidates postmigration identity change.
Forced Migration and Social Trauma addresses the topic of social trauma and migration by bringing together a broad range of interdisciplinary and international contributors, comprising refugee care practitioners, trauma researchers, sociologists and specialists in public policy from all along the Balkan refugee route into Europe. It gives the essence of a moderated dialogue between psychologists and psychoanalysts, sociologists, public policy and refugee care experts. Migration is connected to social trauma and cannot be handled without being aware of this context. The way refugees are treated in the transit or target countries is often determined by the socio-traumatic history of these countries. Social trauma can be collectively committed and perpetuated, leaving transgenerational traces in posttraumatic and attachment disorders, uprootedness and loss of social and political confidence. Media and cultural artefacts like press, TV and the internet influence collective coping as well as traumatic perpetuation. This book shows how xenophobia in the refugee receiving or transit countries can be caused by projection rather than by experience, and that the way refugees are received and regarded in a country may be connected to the country’s cultural‐traumatic history. Refugees, who are often individually and collectively traumatised, experience multiple re-enactments; however, such retraumatisations between refugees and receiving populations or institutions often remain unaddressed. The split between welcoming and hostile attitudes sometimes leads to unconscious institutional defences, such as lack of cooperation between medical, psychotherapeutic, humanitarian and legal institutions. An interdisciplinary and international exchange on migration and social trauma is necessary on all levels – this book gives convincing examples of this dialogue. Forced Migration and Social Trauma will be of great interest to all who are involved in the modern issues of refuge and migration.
In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.
Freud in Zion tells the story of psychoanalysis coming to Jewish Palestine/Israel. In this ground-breaking study psychoanalyst and historian Eran Rolnik explores the encounter between psychoanalysis, Judaism, Modern Hebrew culture and the Zionist revolution in a unique political and cultural context of war, immigration, ethnic tensions, colonial rule and nation building. Based on hundreds of hitherto unpublished documents, including many unpublished letters by Freud, this book integrates intellectual and social history to offer a moving and persuasive account of how psychoanalysis permeated popular and intellectual discourse in the emerging Jewish state.
""Cultural Identity and Mental Health is a unique book because it defines culture and identity from a developmental perspective; therefore delving more deeply into the psychological, social and biological aspects of the immigrant and refugee experience in the U.S.A. and it explains how these experiences help to shape the development of the person's cultural identity. The book presents a very detailed discussion on the concept of acculturation and reviews all of the available literature on the subject. It also covers the sociological, anthropological, political and economic aspects of the immigrant and refugee experience and how these variables impact on mental health, thus presenting the experience of migration from a very broad and humanistic perspective. This book embarks on a deep exploration of the psychodynamic experience of immigration, while at the same time covering the epidemiological risk factors and protective factors related to the immigrant experience; thus, presenting ample and up to date empirically-based data. The book has a unique chapter addressing the true and accurate statistics of immigrant criminality and explores and analyzes this data under a new lens, helping to dispel the myths that result from contemporary anti-immigrant rhetoric. It also explains the types of crimes committed by immigrants, immigrants as victims of crime, cultural crimes, and motivations and the explanatory narratives presented by those who violate immigration laws. In addition, it also covers the history of immigrant criminality in the United States. The book has another important chapter addressing Immigrant Narratives and the role and importance of the personal-historical narrative in life-story construction, and the narrative as a therapeutic tool that can help to repair the trauma of loss and dislocation suffered by many immigrants when they leave their country of origin and begin a life in a new host country. It also introduces the role of the new immigrant narratives in contemporary literature and how this literature can be used by teachers and parents to help integrate the experiences of the different generations of the immigrant family, as well as to educate the younger generations of Americans about the country's new cultural diversity. There is a chapter that explains the new concept of Transnational Identities that result from the improved communication technologies, as well as from more accessible travel, which have deeply changed the immigrant experience and are part of the new phenomenon of globalization. Another interesting chapter analyzes the phenomenon of Return Migrations comparing the points of view of the returning immigrant with those of the ones who stayed behind, further analyzing this topic from a psychological and socioeconomic perspective. It also explains the psychological meaning of Pilgrimages in which the pilgrim visits, not necessarily the land of his or her actual birth or upbringing, but the land of the ancestral family history, in an attempt to bridge the gaps between the generations and to better integrate the pilgrim's sense of ethnic and cultural identity. In addition, this book also has an extensive and well-documented chapter on the refugee experience, outlining the current world-wide refugee crisis and explaining the sociopolitical reasons behind the crisis, as well as offering new evidence-based treatments for this population. This is a very comprehensive and well-written book that covers adults, children, adolescents and families and describes the sociocultural experience of the various generations of immigrants in their adaptation to life in the U.S. It also explores the immigration-related family separations as well as the psychological impact faced by the children that stay behind and later re-unify with their parents in the U.S., as well as those families that are separated by deportation. Finally, the book also presents a comprehensive chapter on culturally-sensitive and culturally-competent evidence-based mental health treatments for the various generations of these populations, including recommendations on ethno-pharmacology. One of the many strengths of the book are the very compelling and clearly explained clinical cases, which help to illustrate the theoretical concepts that are presented in each chapter. This book is a very timely and very valuable contribution to the bio-psycho-social study of the immigrant experience to the U.S. in its first generation and beyond, and is an essential tool for students and professionals in the social sciences, in the fields of social work, psychology, medicine and psychiatry, and for members of government organizations responsible for urban planning, policy and budgets, as well as for agencies dealing with the reception, placement and assistance of immigrants and refugees. ""--
Racism's external forms, from racial assault to petty discrimination, are readily recognized. However, its internal dimensions are easily overlooked: how can we understand what happens in the mind of those engaged in or experiencing racism? This book explores the inner relationship between the self and the socially stereotyped – 'racial' – other, providing a clinically derived model of how racist dynamics play out in the mind. Presenting an original theory of the psychology of racism, it: - Reviews and analyses the existing literature on racism and psychoanalysis, including an extensive study of Frantz Fanon's psychological model - Presents new, in-depth clinical observations of racist interchanges in the consulting room and group settings, and new perspectives on such interchanges in the outside world - Theorizes the way in which the race/class divide is internalized and operates, and considers the relationship between individual and institutional racism - Illustrates how racism can be addressed in group and individual settings Arguing that we cannot work with problems of racism without understanding the inner processes that underpin it, this book is an indispensable tool for trainee and experienced psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors. Its formulations are directly relevant to professionals and academics working across the boundaries of race in health, medical and social service settings.
