Leaving, longing, and loving: a developmental perspective of migration.
Migration has a profound impact on a person's life. The author attempts to establish that dealing with the loss of country resembles the developmental task in late adolescence of mourning the childhood parents and may, in fact, serve as a parallel process. Mourning as a result of loss of country is examined; this is followed by a look at the threat to identity posed by the migration process. The point is made that a country is an object, a nonhuman object, with which one develops a relationship. Attention is paid to nostalgia, in which the ideational content tends to be nonhuman rather than human. Similarities of a parent and a country are pointed out, as well as similarities between parent loss and loss of country. Finally, the parallel between mourning the childhood parents and mourning following loss of country is highlighted in a case vignette.
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de Vryer
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002409:Cathexis; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D012649:Self Concept; D014171:Transients and Migrants / Q000523:psychology*