A story of adaptation told from ego-psychological perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, I offer a story of the adaptation of a young foreign student from Japan undergoing transformative processes of development and eventually becoming a practicing psychoanalyst in New York. The first phase of development took place in a sudden immersion into the radically unfamiliar external environment and culture of the USA. This process of adaptation mimicked and retraced the developmental tasks of infancy in many respects. The second part describes the adaptation of a dyadic psychoanalytic relationship that brought about renewed organization, differentiation, and the development of intrapsychic balance through remembering and rewriting past internal experiences. The concepts and understanding of ego psychology will be utilized in developing the story.

Keywords:

• ego psychology
• immigration
• Japanese culture
• psychoanalytic identity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nobuko Y. Meaders

Nobuko Y. Meaders, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst, a faculty member, and training analyst at the Institute of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society, and clinical consultant at Student Counseling Centers, Pace University, in New York and Westchester, New York. Her publications include a chapter in Immigrant experiences: Personal narrative and psychological analysis, edited by Paul Elovitz and Charlotte Kahn (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), and a chapter in Watashiwa Naze Counselor ni Nattanoka (How did I become a counselor?), edited by Totaro Ichimaru (Sogensha, Osaka, 2002)