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This year, 2017, is the year to celebrate Dr. Volkan's distinguished sixty-year-long contribution to medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, and particularly to psychoanalytically informed international mediation and informal diplomacy.
His personal experiences of ethnic strife in Cypress, his country of origin, followed by immigration to the United States endow his work with rich, deep insights. These are reflected in Immigrants and Refugees, which documents a lifetime of helping others to process their emigration experiences and attendant losses, thereby continuing to process his own. His finely honed skills have enabled him to bring solace to individuals and ameliorate strife and conflict among dissenting groups. Toward this goal he also established the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at the School of Medicine, University of Virginia.
This slim book recounts a lifetime of work. It is packed with ideas, some of them new to this reviewer. For example, Volkan introduces the concept of a “linking object,” which he differentiates from a transitional object and memorabilia, both of which symbolize someone or something. A linking object more directly and concretely forges a psychological connection with someone or something of great significance. For example, at an orphanage Volkan meets a teenage boy, the captain of his soccer team, who tells his life story, which includes his witnessing the killing of his parents and sister. While speaking, he continually rubs his right shoe. Asked about it, the boy explains that as a young child he sustained a burn on his right foot, and although his father treated it with ointment, he still has a scar. He no longer remembers what his parents looked like, but when he strokes the scar, he almost recalls his parents “from within, from inside my body.” The scar is the linking object to the lost parents.