ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the "double consciousness" in immigrant analysts in America. While there are many differences between immigrant analysts in language, class, culture, attitudes toward assimilation, degree of privilege, theoretical orientation and professional training, nonetheless they all have to grapple with viewing themselves at once through the lens of mainstream culture and through their mother country lens. An immigrant analyst should not assume that the fact that she and her 'foreign' patients are all immigrants exempts her from bringing her travel papers to their sessions or guarantees identity between her experiences and those of her immigrant patients and ensures that she can speak their languages. Similarly, an American analyst should not assume that she needs no green card for her American patients, that their culture is an open book to her, because she might then be blind to variations of class, region, ethnicity, gender and religion. Psychoanalysis has not yet developed a coherent theory about immigrant subjectivity.