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Immigrant Experiences is an original, comprehensive, and thorough look at the immigrant circumstance and its resolution. The editors have compiled an interesting, sometimes fascinating book, in which stories of the lives of expatriates often read like a novel. Following the tradition of Freud, the authors, almost all immigrants or adult children of immigrant families, openly discuss their own experiences along with those of their patients. Although the contributors come from many countries (Germany, Israel, Morocco, Ireland, Japan, the Czech Republic, Greece, and India), a common thread seems to run through their experiences. According to Kahn, “Idealization, loss, mourning, and nostalgia, and then the necessity of creating a complex new cultural or national identity” are omnipresent (p. 275). Regardless of how hopeful a person may be about life in the new country, she continues, there is always a price to be paid for leaving the home base. Nevertheless, along with demonstrations of the psychological costs of emigration and the struggles of immigration, the book is a powerful testimony to the possibilities of success. Kahn concludes (p. 280) that complex personalities and new ideas emerge from the crucible of the acculturation process, and rich “transcultural” patterns of living are evidence of the benefits of immigration to both individuals and society.
With the exception of Peter W. Petchauer, a historian, all the contributors are psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, or clinical social workers. In a compilation mainly written by psychotherapists, it is not surprising that the chapters are uniformly well written and of a high level of professionalism.
Paul Elovitz states that “to assimilate or not to assimilate is the vital question facing every immigrant” (pp. 13-14). According to