Cultural Dislocation and Ego Functions: Some Considerations in the Analysis of Bi‐cultural Patients

Abstract

AbstractCultural dislocation – the removal of a person from a location organized by a particular set of cultural practices and placing them in another location organized by a substantially different set of cultural practices – can shock and alter the ego. I utilize the cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu's definition of culture or habitus as “a set of durable transposable dispositions” inculcated from a collective in which an individual is embedded to describe the impact of cultural dislocation. Finally, I suggest that difficulty in mourning the loss of a “country” and “set of ideals” that can no longer adequately mediate the immigrant's new world leads to melancholic symptoms, particularly anhedonia (loss of feeling in the body) and a type of self‐loathing that emanates from deeply unconscious sources.