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It is surprising that it has taken so long for the first psychoanalytic study of the vicissitudes of the migratory process to be undertaken. León and Rebeca Grinberg, two distinguished Argentinian psychoanalysts, who themselves have lived and worked in three continents, more than fill this gap. They create a moving and illuminating account which links the internal migratory experience of psychic development and change with the whole gamut of experience, both normal and pathological, of making moves.
Throughout the book the reader is encouraged to investigate the upheavals that affect the individual's sense of identity. One is stimulated to consider the way each successive move, whether environmental or developmental, depends on an interplay between internal and external factors, fantasy and reality, introjective and projective identifications. This kind of interplay is very much at work in the process of migrating to a new country. On the one hand there are all the fears and hopes, fantasies and conflicts of the immigrant; on the other, there is the question of how he is welcomed and given a helping hand by the receiving country when he arrives. Underlying all of this is the question of why somebody chooses to make a move: what fuels his desire to leave his country? The writers examine the various permutations and splitting mechanisms that ensue.
A rather interesting analogy is drawn between the