ABSTRACT
Commenting on Said’s two-home characteristic of exiles, psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas points out that maybe we are all exiles in that we must leave original attachments and move to new environments where meaning arises from both memory and new creative initiatives (Bollas, 2003, p.8). Further, Bollas suggests that we can transfer Said’s notion of exiles to psychoanalytic theory, proposing a ‘psychic contrapuntal’ (p.8) that recognizes the bene t of movement from one’s primary place to a new location from which the self and others are seen in a different light. This idea contains foundations for therapeutic, empathic resonances – two or more independent life forces harmonizing and dissenting, interacting separately and together in contrapuntal play.
