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The times that we are living in are marked by increasing immigration. Migrating to another land is a complex psychosocial situation involving profound losses, with long-standing effects in the individual. It is a dynamic, open-ended process in which the individual's ego capacities and overall personality integration are severely tested (Marlin, 1994). These movements between cultures can engender major aspects of conflicts, at times, although those conflicts may remain dormant. Occasionally the psychic depletion depend upon, among other factors, if the person arrives in a new country as an immigrant or an exile. Whatever the circumstances, these changes involve times of inadequacy, sorrow, and disappointment, and produce a terrible sense of loss. The enormous task of immigration is a perpetual, conflicting mourning. As Grinberg and Grinberg (1989) point out, “Migration constitutes a catastrophic change insofar as certain structures are exchanged for others and the changes entail periods of disorganization, pain and frustration. These vicissitudes if worked through and overcome, provide the possibility of true growth and development of the personality” (p. 70).
As a result of continuous contact with a new culture the migration experience unchains a process that leads to the transformation of internal structures and internalized object relations. The intense emotional impact of changing cultures is based on the symbolic association between the present cultural experience and the early relationship of the child with the primary caretaker. It is no coincidence that people talk about the “mother country.”
Significant psychological processes occur during this traumatic experience. As a consequence of cultural relocation and the loss of the primary object, the “mother country,” the individual is deprived of the “holding functions” (Winnicott, 1953) of the native country that provided a feeling of safety and connectedness to others. The immigrants