Exile: Paradoxes of Loss and Creativity

What’s in a name? Foulkes, Identity and the Social Unconscious

“…Nitsun (1996) refers to Foulkes's 'idealizing tendency' in his writing about groups and group analysis. Perhaps this tendency reflected Foulkes's impulse also to idealize aspects of his acquired homeland in the manner described by Grinberg and Grinberg (1989), Hollander (1998) and others in their descriptions of the effects of living under and becoming exiles from totalitarian regimes. The violence of such regimes -which Nitsun (1996) suggests Foulkes was unable to acknowledge in his theorizing about groups and group processes -forces its citizens to regress to paranoid-schizoid defences such as splitting, projection, projective identification, magical omnipotent denial and idealization.…”

Social and political perspectives on the psychotherapy and counselling profession: Returning caravelles

“…O f course, this is already happening to some degree. Hollander (1998) notes that the implicit critique of psychoana lytic theory in Latin American analytic practice can also be seen in the inter disciplinary approach of British attachment theorists, who also challenge the limitations of 'the retrospective tradition within psychoanalysis' (p. 202) and the asocial nature of therapeutic work by virtue of the fact that their basic prin ciples, like those of social medicine's, are inherently psychosocial in orienta tion. Indeed, in terms of interdisciplinarity, the lessons to be learned from social medicine and attachment theory have relevance for the work of educa tors, parents and child minders as well as therapists.…”

“…Their psychosocial aspect, incorporates, for instance, an understanding of the impact of violence, injustice and trauma on mental health and sees psychological trauma as being deeply connected with social dysfunction (Dekkers-Appel, 2013). Hollander (1997Hollander ( , 1998 also describes the reflexive analysis which Marie Langer and her group of psychoanalysts conducted to understand their own experiences of exile and those of their patients'. She discusses how attachment theory helped them to make sense of the multiple losses of exile, and was fur ther developed by their recognition that attachment patterns could be disrupted by a traumatic environment experienced in adulthood as well as in childhood.…”

Language, politics and dreams: the challenges of building resilience in refugees

“…It is clear that, for a refugee, the acquisition of language will be an important form of psychic survival in a new culture. Language gives access to a system of meaning in the new culture and will empower the refugee (Hollander ). It will also create distance from the mother tongue and the lost country, which may be a form of psychic separation.…”