Migration and integration in the internal and external community: Narcissistic defence organizations as a hindrance to integration

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I am concerned with the question of relationship between internal personality integration and external integration in the community within the context of voluntary migration. Migration always includes a loss of all that one has left behind. Both internal and external integration in the new community thus involve a mourning process that involves a working through of depressive position anxieties. Only then can the migrant turn towards the new object, the new community and initiate a process of integration. This process is particularly difficult for patients with an entrenched system of narcissistic defences, in which they have turned away from the helpful object, also the helpful object of the community around them and the helpful object of the analyst. These are often patients who have used the migration as a kind of psychic retreat. The difficult process of integration is illustrated in this paper with the treatment of Mr B.