Review of “Psychodynamic Perspectives on Asylum Seekers and the Asylum – Seeking Process – Encountering Well Founded Fear” by Barbara K. Eisold, PhD: by Barbara K. Eisold, PhD

This book, written by a senior psychoanalyst, Barbara Eisold, PhD, is a timely gift to the Mental Health community. It describes asylees, illuminates the asylum process and generally provides a context for understanding immigration. Since the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, he and his administration have made limiting immigration into the United States a central aspect of his policy agenda. The Muslim ban in January 2017 was coupled with “alarmist rhetoric and a hyper focus on national security” (Foreign Affairs, November 7, 2018). The focus then shifted to our Southern border with Mexico where immigrants from the Northern triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) and Mexico attempt to enter the U.S. Increasingly this immigrant population consists of families with children and unaccompanied minors. In April 2018, the Department of Justice instituted a “zero tolerance” policy vowing to prosecute anyone crossing the border between ports of entry, even asylum seekers. Fifty percent of those currently crossing the border are asylum seekers previously exempt from prosecution. Because of the new “zero tolerance” policies, the detention centers fill up more quickly, are seriously overcrowded and the waits for legal hearing(s) extended. In June 2018 as a potential deterrent to crossing the border, the Department of Justice sanctioned separating children from their parents in detention. These separations have the

potential to inflict irreparable emotional harm to children and their parents. Currently, the administration wants to narrow the bases for asylum and cut back on limiting processing at the Southern border. All of the above constitute an immigration and human rights crisis. Eisold’s book arrives in the middle of this chaos humanizing the people seeking asylum, describing the context from which they come, the psychosocial asylum evaluation and the asylum process.

Eisold has been doing psychosocial evaluations to document “well-founded