The Immigrant's Neverland

Abstract

Mining her own experience as an Arab living in the United States, the author presents an aspect of the immigrant's emotional life she came to see while working with a group of Arab adolescent boys in Brooklyn, New York. She uses the metaphor of the Peter Pan story, along with her diary and treatment notes, to explore the experience of longing to return home when there is no home to be found. She finds trauma in her and her group's immigrant experience of realizing that the mental images they held about themselves in the “old country” are obsolete and often cannot be recaptured.

Keywords:

• Adolescence
• Arab
• belief
• group psychotherapy
• immigrant
• Islam
• mourning
• nostalgia

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lama Zuhair Khouri

Lama Zuhair Khouri, M.S., L.M.S.W., is a graduate of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute. She has a private practice in New York City and Amman, Jordan.