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.

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 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

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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).

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 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,

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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
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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

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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.

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 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)

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 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

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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

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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.

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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.

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 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

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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.

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 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

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restructuring in order to adapt, to go from a mere repetition of early stages to an

elaboration of primitive conflicts.

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