By Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph.D.

Trauma, flight, and migration have become signatures of our time. Possibly never before in history have so many people been afflicted by persecution and war in their native countries. As a result, they have had to flee. The only compassionate response from other countries would be to take people in; however, too often this does not happen. Instead, countries close borders and build walls, making it almost impossible for refugees and immigrants to settle in peaceful lands and restore a sense of safety. If it was difficult before COVID-19, now they are treated much worse. 

Like a human body, a nation is imagined to have boundaries, to defend against alien entities seeking to contaminate the body politic. Martin (1990, in Koeningsberg, 2016) suggests that the function of the immune system is to distinguish the self from the not-self, as the ever vigilant protector of the environment of the body. Any foreign body that invades this environment must be rapidly detected and removed. Nations, like bodies, possess sharply defined boundaries, and frequently are imagined to be besieged or threatened. When a nation feels that its borders or boundaries are fragile or porous, it may seek to create walls and borders to prevent alien cells from entering the body politic. Immigrants and refugees are perceived as invaders, alien cells creeping through porous boundaries, threatening to destroy a vulnerable self. Boundaries must be firmed up to protect the population: to defend against sexual assault, to eliminate the danger of parasitic entities draining resources and consuming its substance (Koeningsberg, 2020). 

Abruptly, without warning, the coronavirus appeared. It has no concept of national boundaries or walls. It creeps into every space, seeks real bodies to penetrate, real cells to devour. Studies showed that African-Americans and Latinx are more likely to die of the virus because we sustain the preexisting condition known as race (Jackson, 2020). Moreover, African-American and Latinx are so hard hit by COVID-19 due to their jobs as essential workers and multigenerational living. The walls and boundaries that nations created did not stop the virus (Lijtmaer, 2019 and 2020 b). However, the coronavirus pandemic has opened our attention to the structural racism in which health and illness, thriving or dying, divides and threatens our democracy in lethal ways. We are not all universally and equally vulnerable. Class and race are powerful vectors. The consequences of COVID-19 are certainly an apres-coup for people of color, and other minorities for whom the unequal devastation and protection open a reiterating set of memories of social neglect and racist consequences for health and economic stability (Harris, 2020).

Due to the non-tolerance of immigrants coming to the USA, or to Europe, many other metaphors appeared to define the immigrants. They are seen as the “invaders,” as “subhumans,” as “objects,” as “flooding” the system (O’Brian, 2013).

Related to these metaphors are the attitudes of the “host” country, where there is a troubling tendency among individuals to not dwell on what they see and read in the news, and treat this tragedy as if they have nothing to do with it. The tendency to not see and to not think enables individuals to find safety in the negative, in the “not.” It enables them to not experience guilt at the injustice of seeing people like them lose everything they have, and to not question their indifference or prejudice and their government’s part in the crisis that is unfolding (Sapountzis, 2019). 

It will be helpful now to distinguish between immigrants, exiles, refugees and asylum seekers. Immigrants leave by choice, refugees have successfully pursued their claim for asylum, and asylum seekers have no alternative but to leave their country immediately without preparation (Lijtmaer, 2020 a). The exile’s migration, unlike the immigrant’s, is precipitated by traumatic events, usually of a sociopolitical nature. As an exile the person will be unable to revisit the country of origin. Immigration, exile and refugee states activate many psychological processes including a sense of unreality, reliance on fantasies to make meaning, difficulty integrating and holding self-states by belonging to different cultures (Dieter Miller, 2016). In all cases a mourning process is present—mourning for the loss of country, climate, family, friends, familiar environment, rituals and language (Volkan, 2017), and I would add: smells, sounds and colors. It is multilayered and varies in part as a function of what propels the geographic relocation. 

The exile and refugee’s migration, unlike the immigrant’s, is precipitated by traumatic events frequently of sociopolitical nature. As an exile or refugee, the person will be unable to revisit the country of origin. What was lost will remain lost. Leon and Rebeca Grinberg (1989) wrote about exile as a specific kind of migration in which “departure is imposed and return impossible.” They note that exiles, unlike other immigrants, are typically denied the “protective rite of farewell” (p. 157). They may also develop “survivor’s guilt” since they escaped and others are left behind.

Refugees leave in a rush to save their lives and those of their families. They would not be alive if they had stayed because of political and religious persecution, death threats, slavery, rape of women, or forced labor. These refugees pay smugglers or “coyotes” to take them to safety. The initial hope to escape to a safe “haven” or “the dream” to arrive in a safe country is transformed into a nightmare of humiliation and fear. Still, the refugees continue to make that dangerous trip and nobody hears them.

 

Ruth M. Lijtmaer, Ph.D., is senior supervisor, training analyst and faculty at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey. Board member of The International Forum for Education since 2015. Presents nationally and internationally. Author of many psychoanalytic journals and book chapters, including most recently: “Destruction and survival in a dangerous journey,” Library of Social Sciences Newsletter, (August, 2020); Music beyond sounds and its magic in the clinical process, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, (2021); and Chapter 7: Culture and Psychoanalysis; The Routledge International Handbook of Race, Culture and Mental Health (2021), Lee, E. & Moodley, R., (Eds.). She is in private practice in Ridgewood, New Jersey. 

 

References:

Dieter Miller, L. (2016). The Chimeric Self: Dreams and Nightmares of the Immigrant Experience (Paper presented at APCS, 2016: Dreams and Nightmares: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice in the 21st Century. 10-13-16 to 10-15-16, New Brunswick, NJ).

Greenberg, L. & Greenberg, R. (1989). Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Harris, A. (2020) Analytic Life Amidst the Coronavirus Prana. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30, 632-633.

Jackson, J. (2020, April 14) Coronavirus Illustrates Our Failure to Create a Fair Society. Chicago Sunday Times, https://chicago.suntimes.com › news

Koeningsberg, R. (2016) A human body becomes a body politic. Library of Social Science. E-Bulletin, 3-21-16.

Koeningsberg, R. (2020). Immigrants as pathogenic organisms invading the body politic. Library of Social Science. E-Bulletin, 1-6-20.

Lijtmaer, R. (2019).Where do I belong? I do not have a home: I am a refugee. In panel: On Border Crossings and Displacements: Reflections by Border-crossing Migrants on Belonging, Identity and the Politics of the ‘Illegal Traveller.’ APCS. Conference theme: Displacement: Precarity and Community. 10-25-19 to 10-26-19, Rutgers University, NJ.

Lijtmaer, R.(2020 a) “Destruction and survival in a dangerous journey.” Library of Social Sciences Newsletter, August, newsletter@libraryofsocialscience.com

Lijtmaer, R. (2020 b). Personal reflections on living in the altered state of Covid-19. Clio’s Psyche, 27, 1, 97-99.

O’Brian, G. (2013). Framing the Moron: The Social Construction of Feeble-Mindedness In the American Eugenic Era. United Kingdom: Manchester University. ISBN-10:0719087090.

Sapountzis, I. (2019). Looking and Seeing Nothing. Paper presented in the panel: On Border Crossings and Displacements: Reflections by Border-crossing Migrants on Belonging, Identity and the Politics of the ‘Illegal Traveller’ at APCS, 10-25-19. Rutgers University, NJ.

Volkan, V. (2018). Refugees as the other: Large group identity, terrorism and border psychology. Psychoanalytic Review, 104, 661-685.

 

Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph.D., will be presenting at MIP’s May 7th colloquium, sponsored by CORE (Committee on Race and Ethnicity), entitled Contemporary Perspectives with Immigrants, Exiles and Refugees. Click here to register.

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:

Spotlight on CORE: Part I featuring an interview with Rossanna Echegoyén, LCSW, and Chanda Griffin, LCSW

Spotlight on CORE, Part II: Voices from Dialogues by Wendy Greenspun, Ph.D., and Roberto Colangeli, Ph.D., LP

Bearing Witness to Collective Racial Trauma and Public Health Crisis by Lorraine Caputo, LCSW