The transference thread: trauma, pain and separation anxiety in an adolescent migrant patient.

Abstract

In my work with a migrant family, I explored the youngest daughter's symptomatology and relationship with her mother; analysis offered an approach to her traumatic history, as well as her private pain, which I was initially able to experience through the complex psychological fabric woven between both mother and daughter. The ideas contributed in this paper are drawn from the clinical case, where the central focus on traumatism, pain and migration were the ostensible grounds with which the family sought assistance; however, other issues arose, such as the daughter's entry into adolescence, psychic pain in the body which marked difficulties left in the wake of fear of separation, and losses which were at first be experienced as external, but referred to experiences of internal loss. In addition, there were numerous mournings originating in early traumata, which descended from transgenerational mournings and traumatic situations.