ABSTRACT
Migration adds the experience of having been uprooted and having lost early objects which can undermine the adolescent process of identity transformation in a way that results in a developmental breakdown or in the formation of a false self. The migration forced upon them added to the long sequence of potentially traumatic events in infancy in terms of cumulative trauma and pathed the way for their tendency to blur the boundaries between self and other, between fantasy and reality, between the past and the present. This blurring process also undermined their ability to play with images and symbols of inner and outer reality in terms of abstract operational mentation. Man-made disasters and traumatic migration over the 20th century have obviously produced complex variations of former traditional ways of upbringing within transgenerational continuity and identifications; new ways that have a strong impact on the interplay between outer reality and the internal unconscious world of developing individuals.
