1
Immigration: Its Unconscious Fantasies and Motivations
By Claudia Melville M.A.
This paper explores unconscious dynamics in relation to immigration. The process of immigration involves not only political and socioeconomic factors but also psychological ones. Literature in this topic suggests that immigration arouses unconscious conflicts related to early maturational periods of development. The unconscious motivations and fantasies about emigrating are discussed through a psychoanalytic review of immigration.
In addition to the usual political or socioeconomic reasons for immigration, there
are often psychological factors that I believe should be explored and brings this topic to
our attention. Most immigrants decide to leave their homeland in order to pursue a
“better life”, a higher financial status, a better education, or to be close to other family
members, friends or partners who already have emigrated.
In this paper, I intent to explore what lies behind the decision to leave one’s
homeland and the psychological effects of this process on the individual.
A person in a new country may experience a variety of anxieties and new
symptoms. The person leaves behind familiar food, native music and faces different ideals
and values, different superego dictates, and sometimes, a new language.
Many theorists, such as Akhtar (1995), Grindberg & Grindberg (1984), and Falt
(1998), suggest that immigration arouses unconscious conflicts related to early
maturational periods of development.
2
I will describe the nature of immigration and the different psychodynamic variables
that are involved in the psychological process of adaptation. Some psychoanalytic writers
suggest that the immigrant revisits certain stages of development such as Mahler’s
“separation- individuation” process and Freud’s Oedipus Complex. I will also relate the
immigration process to Lacan’s concept of the Symbolic, and, finally, literature of the
concept of “Guilt”, with the immigrant’s experience in relation to Melanie Klein’s
transition from the paranoid schizoid position to the infantile depressive position and her
concept of reparation will be discussed.
The Nature of Immigration and psychosocial variables involved in the immigrant’s
adaptation process
Immigrants have to give up certain parts of their individuality in order to become
integrated in a new environment. According to Akhtar (1995) immigration involves a
difficult psychosocial process with substantial, lasting effects on an individual’s identity.
On the other hand, he also believes that it is an opportunity to regenerate psychic growth
and alteration. New opportunities and new channels of self- expression become available
(i.e. new identification models, different superego dictates and different ideals).
The fact that the immigrant encounters different philosophies of life, new
traditions, a new language, and other possible anxiety provoking situations, could create
an anxious stage that might lead to a restructuring of the psyche in order to accommodate
new ideals and values. In relation to this, Gringberg & Grindberg (1984) state that the
experience of immigration can trigger different type of anxieties such as separation and
3
depressive ones that will arouse a mourning for objects left behind and for the lost parts
of the self contained in the homeland. Superego anxieties may arise due to loyalties and
values from other country that might differ with the new land’s dictates and beliefs.
Confusion and persecutory anxieties may also develop (p.13).
These changes happen in a sudden and sometimes unconscious way, creating
effects in the émigré. Although some immigrants might experience this anxiety in a
conscious level, others might not. From a psychoanalytic perspective, moving from one
country to another might represent earlier unconscious life experiences.
Several factors will affect the outcome of the immigration process. The greater the
difference perceived between the native country and the new environment, the more the
immigrant has to adjust and give up. Akhtar (1999) claims that the circumstances under
which the immigrant leaves his country will have an important role in determining what
psychological events will follow. Whether the immigration is going to be temporary, or
permanent, makes a significant difference. In addition, the amount of time the immigrant
has to prepare to leave the native land, may affect the subsequent emotional adaptation.
The exile, for example, lacks the time to prepare for such a change, so the immigration
process could become and experience of trauma. Adaptation is also related to the
possibility of revisiting the home country. Akhtar believes that those who can easily and
frequently visit their countries of origin, suffer less that those who are barred from such
“emotional refueling”(p.7).
4
Akhtar states that the age of migration is also relevant. He explains that because
immigration is a destabilizing process, the degree to which psychic structure has been
consolidated, the extent of its continuing reliance upon “stimulus nutriment” from
external reality, and the conscious and unconscious fantasies active at the time of
migration can make a big difference in later psychological adjustment (p.11). For infants,
the destabilization of paternal psychic structures can be very difficult, as they need the
attunement of their parents.
The period of adolescence places more pressure in the migration process. The
adolescent, says Akhtar (1999), is faced with the task of “second individuation” or an inner
disengagement from the primary love object of infancy and childhood. Loss of familiar
cultural institutions at the very time one is fiercely exerting autonomy from parents,
burdens the adolescent ego with “double mourning” (p.13). Some migrations might be
manifestations of mid life crises.
The immigration of elders can be difficult. For an older person, the immigration
process brings different adjustments. According to Grindberg & Grindberg (1989), “An old
person does not wish to move: it is painful to leave things that give him security; his past is
much greater than his future; he always loses more than he gains” (p.128).
The magnitude of cultural differences, such as attire, food, language, wit and
humor, political ideologies, and morals, will also affect the subsequent adaptation.
He claims that, in his clinical experience, he has found that female immigrants
seem to adapt much better to immigration. He states that women, as well as men,
5
experience loss, vulnerability and nostalgia in the adaptation process. However, their
overall adjustment seems to be more grounded satisfactorily than that achieved by men
(1999, p.29). Altman (1977) suggests that women might have a better chance of adapting
themselves to the new country due to resurgence of Oedipal conflicts induced by the
immigration process. Altman claims that the girl’s psychosexual development is influenced
by her shifting from mother to father as the loved object. In other words, she has to
renounce the mother as loved object and identify with her in order to obtain the father.
“This renunciation prepares her for renunciation in the future in a way the boy is unable
to match”(p.48). According to this reasoning, a woman with a positive oedipal experience
will renounce the motherland more easily and will feel more comfortable with the new
land in a way that men will find difficult.
Akhtar (1999) notes that women seem to have a greater amount of depth of
affective exchange with each other, than men. Immigrant women, thus give and receive
more psychic sustenance from their native counterparts than do immigrant men from
theirs. Also, motherhood, which he believes “transcends ethnic and national boundaries”,
gives them the opportunity to become close to their mothers. Immediately related is the
fact that children bring the culture to their mothers, bridging the gap between the culture
at home with the existing outside (p.30).
Marriage is another variable that can either help the immigrant in the adaptation
process or can contribute to the pain of immigration. If the couple was married a long
time before migration and the decision was mutual, then the marriage can help ease the
turmoil of loss and adaptation. However, if the marriage happened during the immediate
6
pre immigration period then it is likely that anxiety over loss and psychic destabilization is
being avoided. It is almost as if the partners are preconsciously aware of the brittle
psychic structures and incapacity to tolerate separation and loss. A marriage during the
immediate post- immigration period also seems to be an attempt to ward off mourning. If
the immigrant has successfully adapted himself to the new culture and decides to get
married it is more likely that libido will predominate over aggression, and the outcome
might be a positive one. (Akhtar, 1999, pp. 31-32).
Crossing of Borders and the Separation- Individuation Process
According to Paris (1978), experience with immigrant populations demonstrates
the symbolic aspects of separation- individuation conflicts during immigration. A sense of
nation is psychological extension of a sense of family; even language (motherland,
fatherland) underlines process such as the wish to leave disappointing or poorly- nurturing
parents (the old country) and to find new and better parents (the new country). Paris
states that it is extremely important for immigrants to be able to return home at regular
intervals, or at least to feel it is an option (p.51).
According to Falk (1983), the crossing of an international border can seem as an
unconscious repetition of the earliest trauma in life: the trauma of birth and the symbiosis
with one{s mother which could not give way to an individuation on the part of the infant
because of the mother’s own panic of being “abandoned” by the child (p.216). From Falk’s
point of view, the immigrant might cross borders in an attempt to individuate from the
7
symbiotic orbit with the mother. The progressive individuation from the first objects are
like that attempt to pull the individual away from a symbiotic orbit.
According to Mahler (1979), during the symbiotic phase there is no outside world
for the infant and therefore no distance from the mother. Gradually there develops “the
space between infant and child”. A tolerable coming and going of the mother will diminish
the baby’s bodily dependence on her. A space is created that will permit the child to look
“beyond the symbiotic orbit”. According to Akhtar (1995) during the practice subphase the
child demonstrates an ability to move away from the mother, first by crawling followed by
upright locomotion. However, he will continue to need a “home base” and returns to the
mother periodically. In the “rapprochement phase”, closeness with the mother seems
acceptable. The mother must remain emotionally available regardless the child’s
oscillations. The capacity for optimal distance gradually develops (Akhtar, 1995 p. 1060).
The immigration process can be compared to Mahler’s phases in that it is
extremely important for immigrants to be able to return home at regular intervals, or, at
least to feel that it is an option. This necessary rapprochement often involves a
psychological reconciliation with the parents, or that parent-extension, the nation.
Refueled and revitalized after each return, immigrants are ready to cope again with the
challenges of their new environment (Paris, 1978, p.51). Immigrants find a world outside
of the symbiotic orbit with the homeland, discover new things and feel powerful.
Nevertheless, the distance and the multiple new situations to which they must adapt,
might be overwhelming, and a need for the “home base” may continue to be felt.
8
According to Akhtar (1999) the immigrant has to rediscover the acceptable limits of
interpersonal space. The immigrant, as in the practicing phase, might greatly enjoy
independence for some time. However, sooner or later, he or she will feel too far from his
mother country and may grieve the lost objects. Fantasies about returning to the
homeland arise. International phone calls, listening to one’s native music, and actually
traveling to the country of origin become an attempt to bridge such distance. These
attempts to be close to the native land serve as “transitional objects” between both lands
(pp. 56, 85).
From a Mahlerian perspective, we might assume that an unsuccessful resolution of
these developmental phases might push an individual towards immigration in order to
individuate. Also, if the immigrant has various opportunities to visit the homeland, we
might presume that the process becomes easier (similar to the way it is easier for a child
to individuate if there is a successful rapprochement phase during childhood).
Crossing of Borders and Oedipus Complex
According to Falk (1974), unconscious Oedipal conflicts may be revived when the
immigrant crosses international borders. He claims that the two nations or territories on
either sides of a border symbolize early parental figures. With regard to this, he writes,
“Crossing an international border may mean crossing the incest barrier… It may also mean
a search for a bounteous early mother who still unconditionally accepts and embrace the
child”. (p.654)
9
Immigrants, then, in their search for a new life, a new job, believe that they will
find an accepting land that will provide them with refuge. These fantasies are, from Falk’s
viewpoint very similar to early infantile wishes concerning the mother. Nevertheless, the
host country will not always grant them such wishes. Immigrants will feel severely
disappointed or profoundly angry.
Falk also notes that borders not only symbolize such interpersonal barriers, they may also
symbolize internal boundaries (p.654).
According to Grindberg and Grindbergt, (1984) borders and boundaries are related
to the topic of taboos and incest. Many people emigrate during their adolescence or
young adulthood, where many oedipal conflicts are revived. There is a need to withdraw
from the objects in order to prevent incest and gain a sense of identity. “Oedipal conflicts
force a new withdrawal from the first love objects, equivalent to exogamic “migration”
imposed by totemistic laws on the primitive horde to avoid breaking the taboos of incest
and parricide”(p.14). It then becomes necessary to work out such conflicts and going forth
to find new worlds to prevent incestuous struggles and at the same time find new ways of
expression in order to attain a sense of identity.
Some also escape the homeland during young adulthood when compromising
relationships result too incestuous. Many immigrants create new love relationships with
people who appear to be “different” from those of the native land.
Some might travel with their native couple and the new country itself becomes a
third situation that challenges the couple in different ways that might diminish the
10
incestuous nature of the relationship. Either way, immigration might help ease incestuous
struggles.
Immigration and Lacan’s concept of the Symbolic
According to Lacan, we only come to know ourselves as a self, as an independent
entity distinct from others and the world, through language and other systems of
representation. This self recognition involves a series of losses, an absence or lack
inscribed in the heart of subjectivity. The experience in a new country can create in the
immigrant a lack, a feeling of nothingness that can lead him to what Lacan calls “The
Symbolic”. Lacan stressed the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood
as the networks, social, cultural, linguistic, into which the child is born. These precede the
birth of a child, which is why Lacan suggests that language is there from the actual
moment of birth. Language is there, say Leader and Groves (2000), in the social structures
which are at play in the family and of course, in the ideals, goals and histories of the
parents. Even before a child is born, the parents have talked about him or her, chosen a
name, mapped out his or her future. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the
newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child’s existence (p.42).
In the imaginary, the child is captured in an image and he or she still assumes
signifiers from the speech of the parents as elements of identification. The baby is bound
to this image by words or names, by linguistic representations. Lacan is quoted as saying
“A mother who keeps telling her son ‘What a boy you are’ may end up with either a villain
11
or a saint. The identity of the child will depend on how he or she assumes the words of
parents”(Leader and Groves, 2000, p.43).
Leaving the homeland implies a possible encounter with the lack, with a loss of
objects, a state of uncertainty. The lack is necessary to pass from a register of imaginary
fusions with the world and with others (The Imaginary) into language (The Symbolic).
Leader and Groves, from a Lacanian position argue that the images which the child uses to
entice the mother must be given up (p.76). Immigration represents a chance to find the
émigré’s own desire and to give up the desire of the mother. When the individual is faced
with a lack, words are needed in order to give meaning to that nothingness. Lacan claims
that symptoms are words trapped in the body, so the symbolic order is achieved when
words can be used as signifiers for symptoms (Leader and Groves, 2000 p.36). I would like
to relate this to Milan Kundera’s novel Ignorance (2002) where he talks about how people
who don’t spend time with their countrymen are, as a natural consequence, affected with
amnesia and attempt symbolization. “The stronger their nostalgia, the emptier of
recollections it becomes.”Immigrants will evoke memories and retrieve past experiences
again and again so they become unforgettable (p.33). Nostalgia, in this excerpt may
represent the lack. The continuous evoking of memories can be interpreted as the
immigrant’s attempt to symbolize experiences.
12
The immigrant’s experience in relation to Klein’s paranoid schizoid position and the
concepts of Guilt and Reparation.
Leaving the motherland might evoke in the immigrant feelings and defenses
related to Melanie Klein’s conceptualization of the paranoid schizoid position. The
paranoid schizoid position is characterized by “all good”or “all bad”relations. Objects in
the infant’s world are this split.
In regard to this, Akhtar (1999) claims that the two countries become a projection
of the immigrant’s split views. One day the country of origin is idealized and the country of
adoption is devalued. The next day, it is reverse. One country is all good and the other
becomes all bad. These two self representations of the immigrant will gradually
synthesize, leading to the development of a “good-humored ambivalence”, toward both
the country of origin and that of adoption (p.83). However, due to this integration, the
conflicts related to the infantile depressive position, such as guilt, now emerge.
Integration of the ego is an essential development in this stage. Once the immigrant
adapts to the new country and integrates the past with the present, the new country is
‘introjected’and the immigrant may be able to incorporate the good and the bad aspects
of the new object representation, the adopted country as well as of the homeland. Klein
(1983) states that the “processes of integration and synthesis cause the conflict between
love and hatred to come out into full force” (p.211). From a Kleinian perspective, then,
such feelings will erect primitive defenses that gradually might mature along with the
immigration process into emotional states characterized by the depressive position.
13
Guilt is an important state experienced during the infantile depressive position.
Feelings of guilt include guilt at success in the new country (standing for an incestuous
triumph), “separation guilt”from the old country and “survivor’s guilt”(Akhtar, 1999, p.83).
According to some theorists, a particular dread among immigrants is that their
parents will die in their absence. Such dread might be a consequence of the projection of
intolerable aggressive impulses felt towards parents. This dread may lead to feelings of
guilt. Paris states that to leave the homeland, is to abandon the parents and to abdicate
the developmental task of nurturing them in their old age (p.51). Klein (1975) holds that a
successful mourning leads to reparation. The immigrant attempts to repair prior damage
done to the object through destructive impulses, and love, feelings that were present in
the early relationships. The early aggression of the child stimulates a feeling of guilt and
the drive to restore and to make good, mobilized by guilt, merge into the later drive to
explore, to find new lands. In such pursuit, the explorer is giving expression to both
aggression and the drive to reparation (p.334).
From this point of view, we can infer that if the adaptation process was
satisfactory, the immigrant hast the chance to repair the object and finds ways to express
his ideas and points of view in new modes.
SUMMARY
This paper suggests that immigration involves a difficult psychosocial process with
substantial lasting effects on an individual’s identity. The immigrant encounters new ideas,
traditions, language and other possible anxiety provoking situations that may lead to a
14
restructuring of the psyche. Several factors, such as age at migration, gender, the
circumstances under which the immigrant leaves his country, the similarity between the
country of origin and the host country, the magnitude of cultural differences, etc. will
affect the outcome of the process of immigration.
Several authors, such as Falk, compare the crossing of the borders to
Mahler’s separation- individuation process. From Falk’s point of view, the immigrant
might cross the border in an attempt to individuate from the symbiotic orbit with the
mother. The progressive individuation from the first objects are like that attempt to pull
the individual away from the symbiotic orbit. Falk also relates the immigrant’s crossing of
international borders to oedipal conflicts. He claims that crossing an international border
may symbolize crossing the incest barrier. It may mean a search for a bounteous early
mother who still unconditionally accepts and embraces the child. Grindberg and
Grindberg state that oedipal conflicts stimulate withdrawal from the first love objects,
equivalent to exogamic ‘migration’ imposed by totemistic laws on the primitive horde to
avoid breaking the taboos of incest.
From a Lacanian point of view, immigration can be understood as a need to move
from The Imaginary to The Symbolic. It may be a need to put into words and to symbolize
relationships with objects. If the individual is bound in the parent’s image, he or she still
assumes signifiers from the speech of the parents as elements of identifications.
Symbolization, then, implies the need to find, possibly with a new language, the
immigrant’s own signifiers.
15
The process of immigration may arouse feelings and defenses characterized by
Melanie Klein’s paranoid- schizoid position. According to Klein, projection and splitting are
primitive defenses described characteristic of this position. The two countries become a
projection of the immigrant’s split views (good and bad) which will gradually synthesize,
leading to possible feelings of guilt, characteristic of the depressive position. The need to
repair may be expressed, says Klein, through exploration of new lands.
CONCLUSION
Immigration, as discussed above, can be understood as an attempt to withdraw
progressively from parental figures in order for the immigrant to obtain independence and
maturity. The individual’s need to progress from what Mahler calls the symbiotic orbit can
also be understood as what Lacan would call moving from the Imaginary to the Symbolic.
It is when the child moves out of the symbiotic orbit in a satisfactorily way that the object
constancy can be achieved. Object constancy implies the child’s capacity to use symbols to
represent objects. The same can be said about Klein’s conceptualization of moving from a
paranoid schizoid position to a depressive position where integration becomes possible
and ambivalence is tolerated. We can also relate this to the Oedipus Complex, when the
father interferes in the symbiotic orbit, the child begins to symbolize by putting words to
such interference that causes differentiation.
I would like to add that immigration, like any other symptom, could be an attempt
to elaborate early maturational periods of development. It does not imply that the
individual will resolve early conflicts but it is an opportunity, due to possible psychic
16
restructuring in order to adapt, to go from a mere repetition of early stages to an
elaboration of primitive conflicts.