I Can’t Forget What You Couldn’t Tell Me: A Psychoanalyst Listens to Asylum Seekers

1 My work with asylum seekers rests on the example and merit of others. I am especially grateful to Shari Nacson, LISW, for help in finding words; to Brian Hoffman, JD, for the example of his courage; and to Anna Janicki, MD, who understands more than I can tell.

Abstract

This paper details my psychoanalytic process evaluating refugees as part of their application for asylum. It focuses on the emergence of unrepresented content and abject states within the intersubjective matrix that lead to collaborative creation of a story of trauma. Such intra- and inter-personal encounters are structured by the larger social, political, and cultural contexts that support, limit, structure, erase, and determine what can be known and told. Knowledge of traumatic inscription necessitates attunement to nonverbal affective states in both survivor and witness as well a receptive society that is able to tolerate grief, acknowledge the degradation and depravity unleashed in victim and victimizer during violence, and absorb survivors’ mournful morality tales.

Keywords:

• Asylum
• refugees
• community psychoanalysis
• psychoanalytic process
• trauma
• Holocaust
• intergenerational transmission
• forensic assessment
• narrative

Notes

1 My work with asylum seekers rests on the example and merit of others. I am especially grateful to Shari Nacson, LISW, for help in finding words; to Brian Hoffman, JD, for the example of his courage; and to Anna Janicki, MD, who understands more than I can tell.

2 As I became more experienced, I became increasingly mindful that, in my role as interrogator, I could be experienced as interlocutor, especially because some asylees kept secrets about relatives still in hiding from those who would kill them back home and about others who were illegal immigrants in the U.S. In writing this paper, I elided their secrets.

3 The Credible Fear Interview looks for a coherent, credible story that demonstrates a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group, or political opinion. It does not count war, gang or domestic violence, corruption, natural disasters, poverty, or famine.

4 The issue of psychological accuracy versus what will work legally (the highest priority for the client) was unexpectedly not a persistent conflict as the truth, in every case, was compelling.

5 Only 14 percent of detainees have lawyers according to the Immigration Justice Campaign; pro bono lawyers are particularly scarce.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nanette C. Auerhahn

Nanette C. Auerhahn, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Beachwood, OH where she is on the faculty of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. Dr. Auerhahn is the recipient of the 2021 International Deanna Holtzman, Ph.D. Interdisciplinary/Applied Psychoanalytic Essay Prize given by the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.