Introduction: The Immigrant Analyst: Journeys Beyond Otherness

Abstract

Immigrant analysts fleeing the Nazis and the ravages of World War II set the stage for North American psychoanalysis in the early 1940s. Only gradually did they come to speak of their double trauma—their excruciatingly painful exodus and their complicated adjustments as othered selves in their new land. Otherness continues to play a critical and often traumatizing role for immigrants in varying and hierarchical ways. The psychological journeys of two immigrant analysts with very different histories offer new insights into the personal transformation of attributed otherness.