title: THE ROLE OF AN IMMIGRANT MOTHER IN HER ADOLESCENT'S IDENTITY FORMATION: "WHO AM I?".
abstract: Immigration is a complex bio-psycho-social process and the immigrant mother has a truly complex task in lending her ego strength to her adolescent offspring. The normal adolescence's decathexis of the love object and the consequent search for a new object may not happen smoothly for those adolescents whose mothers are immigrants. The immigration experience may cause the immigrant mother, who lost her motherland, deeper disturbance in self-identity as well as disequilibrium in her psychic structure, which in turn impacts adversely her adolescent's development. The adolescent's inadequate early experience with an immigrant mother may result in a deeper disturbance in his separation-individuation process as well as his identification process. An immigrant mother who has not mourned adequately, with a different sociocultural background has to go through a far more complex development of motherhood. The case of an adolescent boy, Jason, demonstrates the impact of immigrant motherhood on his ego development.
authors.forename: Mali
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mann
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations