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Migration is a phenomenon of great importance, which seems to have been an integral part of the human condition throughout history. So too is exile, which is certainly one of the worst things that can happen to a man. The violence and interneccine struggles which characterize our age have made this problem acutely relevant. Seen from a wider perspective, the two phenomena turn out to be rather intricate and more often than not disturbing. The Divina Commedia is the poem of exile. In Dante's complex work, exile from Florence becomes exile from life itself. With regard to the relationship between culture and migration, 14-year-old Jiddu Krishnamurti 'agrees' to be uprooted from his native land in order to be educated in Europe, simply on the grounds that he is the new Messiah, the bearer of the new Word. In the end he will manage to break out of the circle of plagiarism, but only after suffering greatly. Migration in the opposite direction still occurs today; for example the missionary who of his own accord ups and leaves to carry the Word of the Messiah to his far-flung brethren. It is worth noting also that in Athens in the fifth century BC, ostracism signified a sentence of ten years in exile against citizens who were considered to be a threat to the social order: ostracism was not a punishment for an actual crime. Aristotle believed that its purpose was to defend the young democracy from a possible return to tyranny, whereas Plutarch thought it was 'a moderate form of satisfaction inspired by envy'.
Migration and exile have long been studied from the point of view of demography, geography, history, and above all sociology. Thus one has to agree with the authors of Psicoanalisis de la Migración y del Exilio, León & Rebeca Grinberg, who express their surprise that a subject with such great potential for development should have failed to attract the attention of psychoanalysis, and this in spite of the fact that many of its pioneers had experienced emigrat