ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social implications of parent's choices of names for their children and the renaming process among immigrant-origin individuals. It explores the social context of naming children in the United States, the process of naming in pre- and post-migration contexts, and effects of naming on intrapsychic life. The chapter also describes complexity of identity that can be discovered through the naming and re-naming process with special attention to both normative process of migration and stressful aspects of migrant family and social life, through discussion of a clinical case vignette. This vignette describes components of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a client who migrated to the United States to flee persecution in his country of origin, from my perspective as an immigrant, Indian American, female psychologist. The experiences of naming among immigrants and refugees raises questions about the influence of acculturation and acculturative stress on intrapsychic life and relational experiences within and outside of one's ethnic communities.