The Impossibility to Mourn and Destructive Fantasies in the Migration Process[1]
[1] Presented at the 46th International Psychoanalytical Association Congress, Chicago, 2009.
Hediaty Utari
I would like to tell you about a Brazilian patient of mine whose migration was accompanied by pathological mourning. In his article “Culture Shock,” Garza-Guerrero describes phenomena of mourning, adaptation (to the outside world), and integration of the inner world to the new surroundings occurring during the migration process. Based on my understanding of mourning processes, which draws on the ideas of an array of authors that range from Freud (“Mourning and Melancholia”) to Salman Akhtar and his relevant notion of “poisoned nostalgia,” I could only partially grasp the phenomena I came across during the analysis of this patient. That is why I would like to discuss this case with you.
This is a patient who suffered a transgenerational traumatic experience. At the beginning of the therapy it was almost impossible to maintain continuous emotional contact with her; she rapidly jumped from one topic to another. I had the feeling that in her lifelong struggle for survival she had lost many emotions and affects. For this reason, the method I chose was psychodynamic psychotherapy face to face, twice a week. Displacements and projections had a significant role in this therapy. Working in the here-and-now was possible only when dealing with specific issues.
Isabella, a 41-year-old, attractive woman with light but tanned skin and black, flowing wavy hair, came to Germany at the age of 21 following her boyfriend Stephanos (of Brazilian-Greek origin), the “love of her life.” There had been no economic or political reason for the move. Stephanos had come to Germany to finish his studies, but had opened a Brazilian restaurant instead. Isabella had also worked there. A shared commitment to fighting against injustice in Brazil had brought Isabella and Stephanos together. Due to their move to Germany, Isabella had had to give up her position as a promising journalist (she had a degree in communication studies), and worked menial jobs as waitress, house cleaner, and babysitter for wealthy families. “During my first years in Germany I lived there, but then again I didn’t. My surroundings were Brazilian – the food, the language, the people around me …”.
The relationship with S. was soon burdened with conflicts – he became involved in illegal transactions, started taking drugs, and became physically violent toward her. In the middle of this crisis she got pregnant and returned to Brazil. Yet in spite of their conflicting relationship, S. persuaded her to return to Germany. After the birth of her child, her mother came for several months to support her. Isabella recounted some of her memories of this period in therapy. Initially she was able to breastfeed Xavier, but then she and Stephanos had a bad fight – he hit her and she hit him back and bit him – and her milk ceased to flow.
She separated from Stephanos, but kept helping out at the restaurant and supporting him financially in the hope that he would straighten out his life. Yet S. returned to Brazil, leaving her in considerable financial debt. She could have never foreseen this development, because she had still believed that there was good in him. Soon she met Günther, a sympathetic, funny man, different from other German guests at the restaurant. Three months later she became pregnant with his child. Again she considered returning to Brazil, but was glad when Günther assured her that he acknowledged his responsibility for their child and would like to marry her. Outwardly relieved, she suddenly “knew that I was trapped in Germany like in a prison.” Günther proved to be a responsible husband. He paid the debt left by S. (approximately 10.000 Euros) and took charge of the eldest son, Xavier, and tried to integrate him into his life. Xavier, then 11 years old, pressured his parents to make every possible effort to change his family name. After a lengthy legal struggle, he took his stepfather’s German last name. Two sons were born from this second marriage – Yulian, 9 years old, and Zoda, 4 years old (“the properly planned child”). Now the family constellation consists of the mother Isabella, her German second husband Günther, and three sons.
This is how Isabella described her life: “…my world is now organized in the German way”; “my inner life feels strangely empty and foreign.” “It’s not my life … I feel I'm… in a golden cage … I had never dreamt of becoming a housewife and mother … I had been an active component of campus life.” “People here are so cold and aloof, I miss the spontaneity, warmth, [and] physical contact (hugging) … I don’t get along with German mothers, they are so controlling and competitive... the same goes for the German educational system … in Brazil everything is more open, simpler; there is more warmth and human solidarity.”
Isabella had problems mastering daily life; she lacked motivation and felt excessively challenged, haunted by depressive thoughts. Her eldest, adolescent son Xavier showed delinquent tendencies – he stole, had almost no social relationships, had bad grades, and so on. She feared that he might become like his father. All these factors led her to have Xavier begin psychotherapy. It was his psychoanalyst who referred Isabella to me.
“Germany … destroys my life,” she complained. “I’m counting the years for my children to grow up. Then I’ll be able to return to Brazil.” She has tried to persuade her husband, who is a manager in a large business, to seek a post outside Germany. Even though this is possible, he absolutely refuses to do so. She would be content to live in Spain or Portugal, where people are less cold than here – she wants to leave this country “where ice rains from the sky…” She even wishes that “a Tsunami or a volcanic eruption would devastate the country, or that World War III would break out” so that her husband would finally see that they must leave. These destructive fantasies she shares only with me. She does not want her husband to know about them. He – such is her impression – sees plainly how unhappy she is here.
Where do such destructive fantasies come from?
I would like to tell you Isabella’s life story so that we can understand her better. When Isabella’s mother was a young girl, she and her siblings were forced to work as slaves or serfs for a family of wealthy landowners, in their household and in the fields. Her brothers (i. e. the patient’s uncles) had to do the more arduous, outside work, while Isabella’s mother, being the youngest sister, did the housework. When a Volkswagen factory opened in a big city nearby, Isabella’s mother’s favorite brother fled the countryside to find work there, and Isabella’s mother followed him. Soon she became pregnant, but gave her eldest daughter up for adoption. My patient is the mother’s second daughter from her relationship with a policeman. This time she swore she would raise the child herself, even though her obstetrician tried to adopt it. “I was born on the wrong side of the tracks,” was the opening sentence of Isabella’s life story. “I don’t know my father, and I don’t have any interest in meeting him – he was a policeman ... you know, but being a policeman in Brazil...” She laughed and hinted that for all she knew, he could have been a criminal.
We may assume that due to her decision to raise Isabella on her own, the mother found herself in a very difficult situation. At first she had no job and no place to live. Then she started working for a wealthy German family with adult children, who were surrounded by wealthy Jewish friends. She worked there for many years. Isabella remembers this period of her life as very positive. At first she was sent to a kindergarten for privileged children, almost like the employers’ own grandchildren: “I had two mothers – my own, and my German second mother.” One day, when the family driver was about to take her to school, her mother wanted to go with her. Isabella’s friends asked her who was sitting next to her in the car, and she answered that it was her housemaid. Having overheard her, her mother became very sad and told her employers about it. Isabella was sent to public school as a result. Today she agrees that this was the right thing to do, and very wise. So far she has not been able either to mourn or to express her pain or sadness about this issue in therapy.
Isabella lived with her mother in a very small room with two beds, a closet, and a desk, but was surrounded by valuable furniture in the luxurious house of her mother’s employers. To her mother’s joy, Isabella excelled at school. She was a leader in her class and was accepted by her peers. She felt well liked and emotionally supported by her mother’s employers, especially by the woman. She often stayed with her classmates’ families after school. They studied and had lunch together at her friends’ homes. (Many of her friends may have belonged to a higher social class than hers.) Nonetheless, she felt she could not bring friends home. “As a child, I was very attached to my mother. As a teenager, my mother was so attached to me that it really got on my nerves. I couldn’t talk to my mother anymore, she wouldn’t understand me, she was illiterate … if I wanted to talk, I talked to my mother’s employer, my second mother.”
Isabella described how her increasing activities outside the house (scouts movement, going out with girlfriends, and her budding interest in boys) caused her mother considerable anxiety. At that time their close relationship with the employer family collapsed. Due to the husband’s gambling addiction, the family went bankrupt. They were forced to move to a smaller city and had to dismiss Isabella’s mother. However, thanks to her skills and unyielding nature, her mother found new employment soon. This change barely affected Isabella’s development. Her social environment remained stable. She managed to finish school and started her degree in communications. She lived in student dormitories and supported herself.
As I mentioned earlier, she met her Greek-Brazilian husband Stephanos in the context of her political activism at the university. Many people in her milieu warned her about him, but she was fascinated both by his power of persuasion and by his good looks. Stephanos met a German man who invited him to continue his studies in Germany. He claimed to be able to get Stephanos a scholarship due to the young man’s alleged German origin. Isabella had started working as a journalist after her graduation, and her friends thought she was very talented. “Nobody ever thought that I would be a simple house wife – I was young and cheerful… and very active in politics!” Yet in Germany her life utterly changed.
Understanding the psychodynamics based on the therapy process
There are certainly many, multilayered aspects in the psychodynamics of this complex life story. I would like to understand how Isabella’s destructive fantasies came about, as I observed that she would resort to a splitting mechanism to overcome conflict. It seemed to me that during her migration process, she had tried to survive the pain caused by the loss of her containing environment – and container mother – by resorting to a manic defense. She worked very hard at her jobs (at the Brazilian restaurant), and after her second marriage she forced herself, and probably her eldest son Xavier, to adjust to German society. She deposited her aggressiveness in her adolescent son, and therefore could not handle either his aggressive behavior or the conflicts in their social environment. Confusion and feelings of despair destabilized her manic defense. “Without Xavier our family life would have been so much nicer … honestly!”
Raising this child and getting in touch with her own ambivalence and mourning posed a great challenge to Isabella. On the one hand, she identified with Xavier’s fate (and his weaker position); on the other, she belittled him (“You are a failure like your father”). Her anger at Xavier may stem from her vengeful feelings vis-à-vis her ex-husband Stephanos, which she projects onto Xavier. According to Mario Erdheim, “many times, parents of adolescent children regress into the period around the birth of these children” (Mario Erdheim). After the child’s birth there is always a period when defense mechanisms weaken. Perhaps Xavier’s behavior triggers Isabella’s love-hate feelings toward his father (Stephanos) and toward her mother as well, and in her inner world she regresses into the chaotic period before and around Xavier’s birth.
I have also found some repetitions:
- Isabella felt that in her first two pregnancies she was not in control of her life. It almost seems like a repetition of her mother’s feelings about her own life.
- The feeling of not really belonging recurs in her eldest son; he fights to belong to his German stepfather and betrays his original identity. In the case of Isabella, saying to her kindergarten classmates that her mother was her housemaid was a form of betrayal.
- Isabella’s feelings of gratitude and dependency toward her responsible and nice German husband could also be a repetition of her feelings toward the employer family (which had an impact on her psychic makeup). Günther paid off her first husband’s debts, and also paid the additional cost of Xavier’s therapy and the cost of the lawsuit against Stephanos. Her second husband’s behavior made Isabella feel both grateful and guilty. She experienced it as humiliating, possibly because she felt helpless and trapped. Might these feelings be a repetition of her mother’s feelings as a slave?
It seems to me that Isabella’s inner world is undergoing a deep regression that has made the splitting mechanism resurface. I already mentioned the manic defense that was present during her migration process. Was she unable to mournall that she had lost (the warmth of Brazilian people and of her own environment, her career)? Initially, Isabella could not or would not know what she had lost. She could not mourn her Brazilian environment, and tried to recreate it in Germany by working at the Brazilian restaurant. Perhaps she felt she did not deserve the luxury of mourning. If she had been able to mourn, she could have seen more of the potential for positive development Germany had to offer.
The pressure to adapt that she had exerted on herself (which she acted out by pressing her eldest son Xavier to do better at school and to adjust socially) had bred aggression, anger, and hatred against Germany, which should not be mistaken for realistic social criticism. This country had destroyed her life, and hence must be punished. A mother (a new motherland?) who demanded that her child (her inner child) make too great an effort to adapt aroused feelings of being under threat, of anxiety, and of hatred. These feelings may have produced a deep and intense guilt. It was, therefore, no longer possible for Isabella to connect with more positive feelings. I observed some splitting phenomena:
- There is the responsible, funny, loving German husband Günther on the one hand, and the (in the meantime) ridiculous, aggressive-destructive, unpredictable, criminal Stephanos, her Greek-Brazilian ex-husband.
- There is Xavier, a failure at school and among his peers and unable to make friends, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Yulian, the “star,” loved and admired by everyone.
- There are the cold-hearted German people, and the idealized Brazilians.
- And there is a poor, illiterate Brazilian mother, and a rich, educated German mother.
But then there is a warm therapist, because even if I, Ms. Utari, am not as warm as Brazilians are, I am still warm enough – that is what Isabella said to me. She said her cousin in Brazil is a therapist and she hugs her patients in the street rather than just giving them a friendly nod! That is how Isabella expresses disappointment and aggression – she hides them behind her sense of humor. I would like to call your attention here on the fact that Isabella has many good qualities – she is an intelligent, shrewd, funny, vivacious young woman!
While I was inquiring into the development of her destructive fantasies, I observed some splitting phenomena that appeared after the breakdown of her manic defense. As Kogan points out, “Grinberg added splitting to the cluster of mechanisms of manic defense (denial, omnipotence, idealization)” (Kogan, 2007, p. 14). It is my hypothesis that Isabella’s splitting mechanism could stem from her traumatic experiences in early childhood. The difficult circumstances of her birth, when her mother had had to look for work and for a place to live, may have led to Isabella’s suppressing or splitting off her primary, needy self, which was repeatedly rejected by her mother. Her mother was not able to mirror her vital aggressiveness, which would have been important for Isabella’s development. Instead, she transferred her depression and her feelings of despair to her baby.
Based on Winnicott’s ideas, I assume that an early false self was constructed due to the persistent pressure exerted on the ego. According to Fonagy’s theory of mentalization, if the mother is not emotionally attuned to the baby, the baby’s mind may lack a space for reflection, and its development may be deficient. The lack of mentalization and her forced adaptation since early childhood might have created an ongoing vulnerable and overly stimulating (overly challenging) environment for Isabella. As a result of these traumatic experiences (cumulative trauma, according to M. Khan), a splitting mechanism may have arisen – the ability to feel ambivalence may have been inhibited. Instead of developing an integrative perception of contexts, reflection, and anticipation, Isabella may have increased her tendency to act out unmentalized affects and fantasies.
Isabella acted out or expressed the fantasy of belonging to the employer family that had appeared during the oedipal period through her betrayal of her mother in the kindergarten episode. During latency she possibly split off her inner turmoil around her identity. She was continually confronted with feelings of envy and jealousy toward her privileged environment. I do not have the impression that either she or her mother bore a grudge against the employers. Yet even though they accepted their fate, there must have been moments of jealousy, sadness, and even hatred in Isabella’s inner life that were split off entirely.
It seems to me that during her late adolescence Isabella managed to get back in touch with her authentic self (Winnicott). She was able to express her aggression, while her central, adapted ego retreated into the background. She thus gained access to her libidinal ego. Nonetheless, during her post-adolescence she developed heroic ideals of social justice, of being a fighter against injustice, which are still alive in her mind. Is there a splitting mechanism in this form of sublimation?
Her splitting mechanism may have activated an omnipotent mode supported by a narcissistic survival mode. In other words, the subject renounces the desirable object, and projects her early oral aggressions toward the outside. As Kogan puts it, “when dependency needs are an unacceptable part of reality, this defense (manic defense) is mobilized. It returns to ego the illusion of omnipotence or self-sufficiency” (Kogan, 2007, p. 15). In my opinion, being emotionally and financially dependent on her husband forced Isabella to give up her omnipotence. This could have been the source of her destructive fantasies.
It is likely that in her inner life Isabella was haunted by the demand for adjustment, and felt overly challenged and hateful at the same time. She projected these feelings onto the outside world (Germany as a mother who demanded only achievements). The victim of these demands seems to have been her son Xavier, with whom Isabella has created a destructive connection by depositing in him her early childhood feelings. Her humiliating gratitude has obviously been distorted by denial and by her repudiation of neediness and dependence. Gratitude has turned into feelings of anger, hatred, and vengeance, which have given rise to destructive fantasies against the new (mother)land.
I chose this case study because I wanted to show how the turmoil of individuals’ inner world is enacted on the migration setting.
Analysis of defense mechanisms – a space for mourning and ambivalence in the therapeutic process
What would happen if Isabella became aware of her hidden jealousy during latency? If I indicated to her that the kindergarten episode functions as a screen memory? If I confronted her with her projection of her vengeful feelings (toward both her ex-husband Stephanos and her unknown father) onto her son Xavier? In the treatment, especially at the beginning, I had always taken into consideration her role as a mother, for she felt increasingly insecure in it. I confronted her with her destructive behavior toward Xavier, while simultaneously offering her my support.
Isabella’s inclination to laugh as a defense against an array of emotions is conspicuous. Laughter seems to be an accepted defense mechanism in Brazil. I am often confused by her laughter in the session, and have started to address this matter consistently. When Xavier’s biological father applied for visiting rights after a seven-year absence, the judge had summoned Xavier. Isabella picked him up after the interview, and Xavier told her about it while they were driving home. Xavier asked his mother to tell the judge that he got along very well with everybody in the family. She laughed – as she did in the session. Her laughter irritated me, and I told her so. She said that Xavier was just a liar; that he provoked and annoyed everybody at home. I asked her to think why she had had to laugh at that precise moment. After a while she said that she had actually felt helpless. We were thus able to work through her feelings of helplessness, guilt, and anger regarding her son. She constantly changed topics during our conversations. I had nearly given up on this particular subject. Yet she unexpectedly came back to it herself, and wondered how Xavier might have felt about her laughter.
Laughing is healthy. Lachen ist gesund sagt man in Deutschland. My patient says one is always laughing in Brazil. As an Indonesian, I love laughter and making jokes. It brings me emotionally closer to my patients. However, Isabella has a different laugh – she says so herself. It is gallows humor. My calm (Asian, or in any case Javanese) temperament, combined with my psychoanalytic reflectiveness, often meets with a humorous, or seemingly humorous, erratic attitude… with which I have had to struggle hour after hour.
I hope to open a space for ambivalence, a space that is less dominated by Isabella’s fear of being flooded by emotions. After about one year in therapy, she stopped counting the years she had spent in Germany and seemed less obsessed with the idea of living in Brazil. She began to take responsibility for the decision to live here, and to mourn the loss brought about by migration.
The fight with her ex-husband regarding visiting rights is still an issue. Stephanos left Germany when Xavier was about 6 years old, so they have not had any contact for almost seven years. Last year he returned to Germany and tried to get in touch with his son. Xavier did not want to see his father. A long, stressful period ensued during which Xavier was very aggressive toward everybody in the family. Isabella experienced a feeling of hatred against Stephanos, as well as anxiety and some guilt (because Xavier had rejected his Greek family name). She shedded bitter tears, and asked me to hold her before she went to the court hearing. I hugged her.
Besides facing different issues and reflecting upon them, during this period of the therapy we created the experience of containing confusion and ambiguity. In the long run, the loss of her homeland should no longer be split off and suppressed by destructive projections. Rather, it should be acknowledged and mourned in order to prepare the ground for the development of a generic integration process.
Munich, May 24, 2009
[1] Presented at the 46th International Psychoanalytical Association Congress, Chicago, 2009.
Hediaty Utari
I would like to tell you about a Brazilian patient of mine whose migration was accompanied by pathological mourning. In his article “Culture Shock,” Garza-Guerrero describes phenomena of mourning, adaptation (to the outside world), and integration of the inner world to the new surroundings occurring during the migration process. Based on my understanding of mourning processes, which draws on the ideas of an array of authors that range from Freud (“Mourning and Melancholia”) to Salman Akhtar and his relevant notion of “poisoned nostalgia,” I could only partially grasp the phenomena I came across during the analysis of this patient. That is why I would like to discuss this case with you.
This is a patient who suffered a transgenerational traumatic experience. At the beginning of the therapy it was almost impossible to maintain continuous emotional contact with her; she rapidly jumped from one topic to another. I had the feeling that in her lifelong struggle for survival she had lost many emotions and affects. For this reason, the method I chose was psychodynamic psychotherapy face to face, twice a week. Displacements and projections had a significant role in this therapy. Working in the here-and-now was possible only when dealing with specific issues.
Isabella, a 41-year-old, attractive woman with light but tanned skin and black, flowing wavy hair, came to Germany at the age of 21 following her boyfriend Stephanos (of Brazilian-Greek origin), the “love of her life.” There had been no economic or political reason for the move. Stephanos had come to Germany to finish his studies, but had opened a Brazilian restaurant instead. Isabella had also worked there. A shared commitment to fighting against injustice in Brazil had brought Isabella and Stephanos together. Due to their move to Germany, Isabella had had to give up her position as a promising journalist (she had a degree in communication studies), and worked menial jobs as waitress, house cleaner, and babysitter for wealthy families. “During my first years in Germany I lived there, but then again I didn’t. My surroundings were Brazilian – the food, the language, the people around me …”.
The relationship with S. was soon burdened with conflicts – he became involved in illegal transactions, started taking drugs, and became physically violent toward her. In the middle of this crisis she got pregnant and returned to Brazil. Yet in spite of their conflicting relationship, S. persuaded her to return to Germany. After the birth of her child, her mother came for several months to support her. Isabella recounted some of her memories of this period in therapy. Initially she was able to breastfeed Xavier, but then she and Stephanos had a bad fight – he hit her and she hit him back and bit him – and her milk ceased to flow.
She separated from Stephanos, but kept helping out at the restaurant and supporting him financially in the hope that he would straighten out his life. Yet S. returned to Brazil, leaving her in considerable financial debt. She could have never foreseen this development, because she had still believed that there was good in him. Soon she met Günther, a sympathetic, funny man, different from other German guests at the restaurant. Three months later she became pregnant with his child. Again she considered returning to Brazil, but was glad when Günther assured her that he acknowledged his responsibility for their child and would like to marry her. Outwardly relieved, she suddenly “knew that I was trapped in Germany like in a prison.” Günther proved to be a responsible husband. He paid the debt left by S. (approximately 10.000 Euros) and took charge of the eldest son, Xavier, and tried to integrate him into his life. Xavier, then 11 years old, pressured his parents to make every possible effort to change his family name. After a lengthy legal struggle, he took his stepfather’s German last name. Two sons were born from this second marriage – Yulian, 9 years old, and Zoda, 4 years old (“the properly planned child”). Now the family constellation consists of the mother Isabella, her German second husband Günther, and three sons.
This is how Isabella described her life: “…my world is now organized in the German way”; “my inner life feels strangely empty and foreign.” “It’s not my life … I feel I'm… in a golden cage … I had never dreamt of becoming a housewife and mother … I had been an active component of campus life.” “People here are so cold and aloof, I miss the spontaneity, warmth, [and] physical contact (hugging) … I don’t get along with German mothers, they are so controlling and competitive... the same goes for the German educational system … in Brazil everything is more open, simpler; there is more warmth and human solidarity.”
Isabella had problems mastering daily life; she lacked motivation and felt excessively challenged, haunted by depressive thoughts. Her eldest, adolescent son Xavier showed delinquent tendencies – he stole, had almost no social relationships, had bad grades, and so on. She feared that he might become like his father. All these factors led her to have Xavier begin psychotherapy. It was his psychoanalyst who referred Isabella to me.
“Germany … destroys my life,” she complained. “I’m counting the years for my children to grow up. Then I’ll be able to return to Brazil.” She has tried to persuade her husband, who is a manager in a large business, to seek a post outside Germany. Even though this is possible, he absolutely refuses to do so. She would be content to live in Spain or Portugal, where people are less cold than here – she wants to leave this country “where ice rains from the sky…” She even wishes that “a Tsunami or a volcanic eruption would devastate the country, or that World War III would break out” so that her husband would finally see that they must leave. These destructive fantasies she shares only with me. She does not want her husband to know about them. He – such is her impression – sees plainly how unhappy she is here.
Where do such destructive fantasies come from?
I would like to tell you Isabella’s life story so that we can understand her better. When Isabella’s mother was a young girl, she and her siblings were forced to work as slaves or serfs for a family of wealthy landowners, in their household and in the fields. Her brothers (i. e. the patient’s uncles) had to do the more arduous, outside work, while Isabella’s mother, being the youngest sister, did the housework. When a Volkswagen factory opened in a big city nearby, Isabella’s mother’s favorite brother fled the countryside to find work there, and Isabella’s mother followed him. Soon she became pregnant, but gave her eldest daughter up for adoption. My patient is the mother’s second daughter from her relationship with a policeman. This time she swore she would raise the child herself, even though her obstetrician tried to adopt it. “I was born on the wrong side of the tracks,” was the opening sentence of Isabella’s life story. “I don’t know my father, and I don’t have any interest in meeting him – he was a policeman ... you know, but being a policeman in Brazil...” She laughed and hinted that for all she knew, he could have been a criminal.
We may assume that due to her decision to raise Isabella on her own, the mother found herself in a very difficult situation. At first she had no job and no place to live. Then she started working for a wealthy German family with adult children, who were surrounded by wealthy Jewish friends. She worked there for many years. Isabella remembers this period of her life as very positive. At first she was sent to a kindergarten for privileged children, almost like the employers’ own grandchildren: “I had two mothers – my own, and my German second mother.” One day, when the family driver was about to take her to school, her mother wanted to go with her. Isabella’s friends asked her who was sitting next to her in the car, and she answered that it was her housemaid. Having overheard her, her mother became very sad and told her employers about it. Isabella was sent to public school as a result. Today she agrees that this was the right thing to do, and very wise. So far she has not been able either to mourn or to express her pain or sadness about this issue in therapy.
Isabella lived with her mother in a very small room with two beds, a closet, and a desk, but was surrounded by valuable furniture in the luxurious house of her mother’s employers. To her mother’s joy, Isabella excelled at school. She was a leader in her class and was accepted by her peers. She felt well liked and emotionally supported by her mother’s employers, especially by the woman. She often stayed with her classmates’ families after school. They studied and had lunch together at her friends’ homes. (Many of her friends may have belonged to a higher social class than hers.) Nonetheless, she felt she could not bring friends home. “As a child, I was very attached to my mother. As a teenager, my mother was so attached to me that it really got on my nerves. I couldn’t talk to my mother anymore, she wouldn’t understand me, she was illiterate … if I wanted to talk, I talked to my mother’s employer, my second mother.”
Isabella described how her increasing activities outside the house (scouts movement, going out with girlfriends, and her budding interest in boys) caused her mother considerable anxiety. At that time their close relationship with the employer family collapsed. Due to the husband’s gambling addiction, the family went bankrupt. They were forced to move to a smaller city and had to dismiss Isabella’s mother. However, thanks to her skills and unyielding nature, her mother found new employment soon. This change barely affected Isabella’s development. Her social environment remained stable. She managed to finish school and started her degree in communications. She lived in student dormitories and supported herself.
As I mentioned earlier, she met her Greek-Brazilian husband Stephanos in the context of her political activism at the university. Many people in her milieu warned her about him, but she was fascinated both by his power of persuasion and by his good looks. Stephanos met a German man who invited him to continue his studies in Germany. He claimed to be able to get Stephanos a scholarship due to the young man’s alleged German origin. Isabella had started working as a journalist after her graduation, and her friends thought she was very talented. “Nobody ever thought that I would be a simple house wife – I was young and cheerful… and very active in politics!” Yet in Germany her life utterly changed.
Understanding the psychodynamics based on the therapy process
There are certainly many, multilayered aspects in the psychodynamics of this complex life story. I would like to understand how Isabella’s destructive fantasies came about, as I observed that she would resort to a splitting mechanism to overcome conflict. It seemed to me that during her migration process, she had tried to survive the pain caused by the loss of her containing environment – and container mother – by resorting to a manic defense. She worked very hard at her jobs (at the Brazilian restaurant), and after her second marriage she forced herself, and probably her eldest son Xavier, to adjust to German society. She deposited her aggressiveness in her adolescent son, and therefore could not handle either his aggressive behavior or the conflicts in their social environment. Confusion and feelings of despair destabilized her manic defense. “Without Xavier our family life would have been so much nicer … honestly!”
Raising this child and getting in touch with her own ambivalence and mourning posed a great challenge to Isabella. On the one hand, she identified with Xavier’s fate (and his weaker position); on the other, she belittled him (“You are a failure like your father”). Her anger at Xavier may stem from her vengeful feelings vis-à-vis her ex-husband Stephanos, which she projects onto Xavier. According to Mario Erdheim, “many times, parents of adolescent children regress into the period around the birth of these children” (Mario Erdheim). After the child’s birth there is always a period when defense mechanisms weaken. Perhaps Xavier’s behavior triggers Isabella’s love-hate feelings toward his father (Stephanos) and toward her mother as well, and in her inner world she regresses into the chaotic period before and around Xavier’s birth.
I have also found some repetitions:
- Isabella felt that in her first two pregnancies she was not in control of her life. It almost seems like a repetition of her mother’s feelings about her own life.
- The feeling of not really belonging recurs in her eldest son; he fights to belong to his German stepfather and betrays his original identity. In the case of Isabella, saying to her kindergarten classmates that her mother was her housemaid was a form of betrayal.
- Isabella’s feelings of gratitude and dependency toward her responsible and nice German husband could also be a repetition of her feelings toward the employer family (which had an impact on her psychic makeup). Günther paid off her first husband’s debts, and also paid the additional cost of Xavier’s therapy and the cost of the lawsuit against Stephanos. Her second husband’s behavior made Isabella feel both grateful and guilty. She experienced it as humiliating, possibly because she felt helpless and trapped. Might these feelings be a repetition of her mother’s feelings as a slave?
It seems to me that Isabella’s inner world is undergoing a deep regression that has made the splitting mechanism resurface. I already mentioned the manic defense that was present during her migration process. Was she unable to mournall that she had lost (the warmth of Brazilian people and of her own environment, her career)? Initially, Isabella could not or would not know what she had lost. She could not mourn her Brazilian environment, and tried to recreate it in Germany by working at the Brazilian restaurant. Perhaps she felt she did not deserve the luxury of mourning. If she had been able to mourn, she could have seen more of the potential for positive development Germany had to offer.
The pressure to adapt that she had exerted on herself (which she acted out by pressing her eldest son Xavier to do better at school and to adjust socially) had bred aggression, anger, and hatred against Germany, which should not be mistaken for realistic social criticism. This country had destroyed her life, and hence must be punished. A mother (a new motherland?) who demanded that her child (her inner child) make too great an effort to adapt aroused feelings of being under threat, of anxiety, and of hatred. These feelings may have produced a deep and intense guilt. It was, therefore, no longer possible for Isabella to connect with more positive feelings. I observed some splitting phenomena:
- There is the responsible, funny, loving German husband Günther on the one hand, and the (in the meantime) ridiculous, aggressive-destructive, unpredictable, criminal Stephanos, her Greek-Brazilian ex-husband.
- There is Xavier, a failure at school and among his peers and unable to make friends, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Yulian, the “star,” loved and admired by everyone.
- There are the cold-hearted German people, and the idealized Brazilians.
- And there is a poor, illiterate Brazilian mother, and a rich, educated German mother.
But then there is a warm therapist, because even if I, Ms. Utari, am not as warm as Brazilians are, I am still warm enough – that is what Isabella said to me. She said her cousin in Brazil is a therapist and she hugs her patients in the street rather than just giving them a friendly nod! That is how Isabella expresses disappointment and aggression – she hides them behind her sense of humor. I would like to call your attention here on the fact that Isabella has many good qualities – she is an intelligent, shrewd, funny, vivacious young woman!
While I was inquiring into the development of her destructive fantasies, I observed some splitting phenomena that appeared after the breakdown of her manic defense. As Kogan points out, “Grinberg added splitting to the cluster of mechanisms of manic defense (denial, omnipotence, idealization)” (Kogan, 2007, p. 14). It is my hypothesis that Isabella’s splitting mechanism could stem from her traumatic experiences in early childhood. The difficult circumstances of her birth, when her mother had had to look for work and for a place to live, may have led to Isabella’s suppressing or splitting off her primary, needy self, which was repeatedly rejected by her mother. Her mother was not able to mirror her vital aggressiveness, which would have been important for Isabella’s development. Instead, she transferred her depression and her feelings of despair to her baby.
Based on Winnicott’s ideas, I assume that an early false self was constructed due to the persistent pressure exerted on the ego. According to Fonagy’s theory of mentalization, if the mother is not emotionally attuned to the baby, the baby’s mind may lack a space for reflection, and its development may be deficient. The lack of mentalization and her forced adaptation since early childhood might have created an ongoing vulnerable and overly stimulating (overly challenging) environment for Isabella. As a result of these traumatic experiences (cumulative trauma, according to M. Khan), a splitting mechanism may have arisen – the ability to feel ambivalence may have been inhibited. Instead of developing an integrative perception of contexts, reflection, and anticipation, Isabella may have increased her tendency to act out unmentalized affects and fantasies.
Isabella acted out or expressed the fantasy of belonging to the employer family that had appeared during the oedipal period through her betrayal of her mother in the kindergarten episode. During latency she possibly split off her inner turmoil around her identity. She was continually confronted with feelings of envy and jealousy toward her privileged environment. I do not have the impression that either she or her mother bore a grudge against the employers. Yet even though they accepted their fate, there must have been moments of jealousy, sadness, and even hatred in Isabella’s inner life that were split off entirely.
It seems to me that during her late adolescence Isabella managed to get back in touch with her authentic self (Winnicott). She was able to express her aggression, while her central, adapted ego retreated into the background. She thus gained access to her libidinal ego. Nonetheless, during her post-adolescence she developed heroic ideals of social justice, of being a fighter against injustice, which are still alive in her mind. Is there a splitting mechanism in this form of sublimation?
Her splitting mechanism may have activated an omnipotent mode supported by a narcissistic survival mode. In other words, the subject renounces the desirable object, and projects her early oral aggressions toward the outside. As Kogan puts it, “when dependency needs are an unacceptable part of reality, this defense (manic defense) is mobilized. It returns to ego the illusion of omnipotence or self-sufficiency” (Kogan, 2007, p. 15). In my opinion, being emotionally and financially dependent on her husband forced Isabella to give up her omnipotence. This could have been the source of her destructive fantasies.
It is likely that in her inner life Isabella was haunted by the demand for adjustment, and felt overly challenged and hateful at the same time. She projected these feelings onto the outside world (Germany as a mother who demanded only achievements). The victim of these demands seems to have been her son Xavier, with whom Isabella has created a destructive connection by depositing in him her early childhood feelings. Her humiliating gratitude has obviously been distorted by denial and by her repudiation of neediness and dependence. Gratitude has turned into feelings of anger, hatred, and vengeance, which have given rise to destructive fantasies against the new (mother)land.
I chose this case study because I wanted to show how the turmoil of individuals’ inner world is enacted on the migration setting.
Analysis of defense mechanisms – a space for mourning and ambivalence in the therapeutic process
What would happen if Isabella became aware of her hidden jealousy during latency? If I indicated to her that the kindergarten episode functions as a screen memory? If I confronted her with her projection of her vengeful feelings (toward both her ex-husband Stephanos and her unknown father) onto her son Xavier? In the treatment, especially at the beginning, I had always taken into consideration her role as a mother, for she felt increasingly insecure in it. I confronted her with her destructive behavior toward Xavier, while simultaneously offering her my support.
Isabella’s inclination to laugh as a defense against an array of emotions is conspicuous. Laughter seems to be an accepted defense mechanism in Brazil. I am often confused by her laughter in the session, and have started to address this matter consistently. When Xavier’s biological father applied for visiting rights after a seven-year absence, the judge had summoned Xavier. Isabella picked him up after the interview, and Xavier told her about it while they were driving home. Xavier asked his mother to tell the judge that he got along very well with everybody in the family. She laughed – as she did in the session. Her laughter irritated me, and I told her so. She said that Xavier was just a liar; that he provoked and annoyed everybody at home. I asked her to think why she had had to laugh at that precise moment. After a while she said that she had actually felt helpless. We were thus able to work through her feelings of helplessness, guilt, and anger regarding her son. She constantly changed topics during our conversations. I had nearly given up on this particular subject. Yet she unexpectedly came back to it herself, and wondered how Xavier might have felt about her laughter.
Laughing is healthy. Lachen ist gesund sagt man in Deutschland. My patient says one is always laughing in Brazil. As an Indonesian, I love laughter and making jokes. It brings me emotionally closer to my patients. However, Isabella has a different laugh – she says so herself. It is gallows humor. My calm (Asian, or in any case Javanese) temperament, combined with my psychoanalytic reflectiveness, often meets with a humorous, or seemingly humorous, erratic attitude… with which I have had to struggle hour after hour.
I hope to open a space for ambivalence, a space that is less dominated by Isabella’s fear of being flooded by emotions. After about one year in therapy, she stopped counting the years she had spent in Germany and seemed less obsessed with the idea of living in Brazil. She began to take responsibility for the decision to live here, and to mourn the loss brought about by migration.
The fight with her ex-husband regarding visiting rights is still an issue. Stephanos left Germany when Xavier was about 6 years old, so they have not had any contact for almost seven years. Last year he returned to Germany and tried to get in touch with his son. Xavier did not want to see his father. A long, stressful period ensued during which Xavier was very aggressive toward everybody in the family. Isabella experienced a feeling of hatred against Stephanos, as well as anxiety and some guilt (because Xavier had rejected his Greek family name). She shedded bitter tears, and asked me to hold her before she went to the court hearing. I hugged her.
Besides facing different issues and reflecting upon them, during this period of the therapy we created the experience of containing confusion and ambiguity. In the long run, the loss of her homeland should no longer be split off and suppressed by destructive projections. Rather, it should be acknowledged and mourned in order to prepare the ground for the development of a generic integration process.
Munich, May 24, 2009
