Red Sistémica · Migration
Culture, health and immigration. Inner world and identity: some problems of the immigrant
Edition of the workshop presented by Roberto J. García at the 7th International Workshop of the Ospedale San Gallicano in Rome, in November 1999, on the theme “Culture, health and immigration”. The author describes what is at stake in the inner world of the person who emigrates: a massive mourning, confusional, persecutory and depressive anxieties, regressive states, and above all an identity that enters into crisis — to the point that, when the available psychic energy is no longer sufficient, pathologies of the body or of the social bond may appear.
Opening words
I thank the organisers of the workshop for offering me the possibility of setting out a few concepts relating to the theme that brings us together today: “Health, culture and immigration”.
This work is the fruit of reflections developed by the Viale Angelico group and by other researchers on the question. The group is coordinated by Dr Baiguera, with whom, alongside our colleagues Doctors Del Guerra, Huberman, Lenzi and Jorge, I have been dealing with the subject since 1989. Given the time available to me, I shall leave undeveloped certain themes which nevertheless form an integral part of this problematic, such as mourning, the transgenerational message or language, among others. Nor shall I be able to dwell on the importance of the migratory process in History and in our own age.
Introduction: geographical change, identity and mental process
An emigrant is a person who moves from one country to another, or from one region to another, sufficiently different from and distant from each other, and for a period sufficiently prolonged for them to have to live there and to carry out everyday personal, social and professional activities.
Because of the various new situations to be faced and of the absence of the familiar points of reference and support, there develops inside people a process that encompasses and engages all the psychological structures: mourning, anxieties, regressions, which lead to the problematic of identity, which enters into crisis.
This situation follows, over the first two or three years, a silent-active course, but it may at times give rise to fairly significant pathologies.
In the definition of the emigrant, two moments can be isolated: one is the geographical change, the other is the mental process.
On this second moment, I would say that the inner world of the person (an adult, alone or with their family, who has freely decided to migrate from one city to another, from one country to another within the Western world) is, during the first years, tormented by the history of a previous life, by anxieties of a confusional, persecutory and depressive type linked to everything they have left behind, by regressive states following upon mourning and the loss of all their roles, and by disturbances of identity.
From the psychological point of view, this is a person confronted with a massive mourning: the new reality totally destroys more than one parameter of their identity. And, at the same time, they must adapt to this new reality, by learning, comparing, accepting, rejecting, and so on.
The new reality totally destroys more than one parameter of his identity.
Roberto J. García
The “quantum” of psychic energy needed to face this double task is at times greater than the quantity available: it is then that, depending on the previous life history, pathologies of various kinds and degrees of severity may arise, which may express themselves either in the body — for example cardiovascular diseases, ulcers, cancers, and so on —, or in the social field, in the form of criminal behaviour, drug dependencies, and so on.
If the diagnostic assessment is complex, one cannot fail to take into account the incidence of a particular psychological problematic, which encompasses the emigrating person and his context, new or old, and which includes both the motives for the choice to emigrate and its consequences.
Cultural differences have long been the object of studies aimed at understanding better how they bear upon these processes.
External situations weigh significantly upon the capacity to face emigration, but also upon the consequences that will follow from it, upon what may come about and upon the way in which immigration itself will finally be worked through.
The label of “emigrant” and its consequences
An extract
Red Sistémica publishes online only a fragment of this text: it breaks off here, on the threshold of the section “The label of emigrant and its consequences”, of which only the title is given. The complete article appeared in no. 83 of Perspectivas Sistémicas. Our translation covers the whole of the fragment published, and nothing more.
Who is Roberto J. García
Doctor Roberto J. García is a psychologist, psychotherapist, supervisor of families and couples, and family mediator. He belongs to the Viale Angelico group in Rome and is today a researcher and clinician of the psychological problematic of migration within the Asociación Vivere Altrove group, in Rome, Italy.
Editor’s note
The journal announced: “Dr García will visit us in August 2005 and will give lectures, courses and supervisions on the themes of his speciality.” To contact the author: r.garcia@katamail.com
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This article is an English translation of “Cultura, salud e inmigación. Mundo Interno e Identidad. Algunos problemas del inmigrante”, published by Red Sistémica (first published in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 83 (texte issu du 7e Workshop international de l’Ospedale San Gallicano, Rome, novembre 1999)). Translated and republished with the journal’s permission.
Read the original articleHow to cite this article
García, R. J. (2022). Culture, health and immigration. Inner world and identity: some problems of the immigrant (Complexe Systémique, Trans.). Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/culture-health-and-immigration-inner-world-and-identity-some-problems-of-the-immigrant (Original work published in 1999 in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 83 (texte issu du 7e Workshop international de l’Ospedale San Gallicano, Rome, novembre 1999); republished in 2022 by Red Sistémica, https://redsistemica.ar/2022/07/19/cultura-salud-e-inmigacion-mundo-interno-e-identidad-algunos-problemas-del-inmigrante/)
To go further
- Migration, ambiguous loss and ritualsThe migrant’s mourning read as an ambiguous loss, and the rituals that make it possible to work it through.
- The transnational family. A new and brave kind of familyWhat becomes of the family when it lives lastingly on both sides of a border.
- The identity of difference. To the rhythm of family therapy in BrazilAnother way into the question of cultural identity and of the work it calls for in therapy.
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