ABSTRACT
This chapter provides insight into two distinct yet interwoven immigration narratives, highlighting the intricacies of the author's own immigration, especially as it relates to racial identity development. She also reflects on the role of my immigration experience and how it influences her psychoanalytic clinical identity, as how a narrative of otherness may inform practice, and ultimately, a therapeutic dyad. Most meaningful by way of clinical development, however, was her ability to work within an enactment of otherness between herself and Mr. H, a Middle Eastern immigrant patient. He is a racialized subject who relied heavily on internalized; aggressive introjects to defend against further psychic intrusion. The author experienced as the most painful reminders of her own otherness often occurred at times when Mr. H himself felt psychically intruded upon, such as when they delved more deeply into his underlying dynamics. In these instances she often felt relegated to invisible other—a bystander, powerless.
