Integrating the Stranger: Travelling across identity boundaries

Abstract

In the present historical context, migratory flows have acquired a particular political and social relevance by showing a deep imbalance in the globalized world. Those who migrate to wealthy countries due to wars or extreme poverty do not have an identity that can be homogenized; they are aliens, strangers carrying destabilizing life experiences. The meeting between the new idea-content represented by the Stranger and the receiving group-container can therefore have catastrophic consequences. The author’s reflection aims to focus on the significance of the figure of the Stranger and on the condition that might support an integration process, starting from an analogy between the collective dynamics of the social environment and the individual psychical ones as experienced in the psychoanalytic setting.

Key words:

• Stranger
• immigration
• integration
• boundary
• identity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rita Terranova

Rita Terranova is a PhD in sociology and psychology, a psychoanalyst and member of the Società Italiana Psicoanalisi Interpersonale (SIPI), a teacher at the H.S. Sullivan Institute of Analytical Psychotherapy (IPA) in Florence, a psychotherapist participant in the activities of the Coordinamento Toscana Marginalità (TCM), and a private psychoanalyst in Florence.