Awakened by a Fist

ABSTRACT “Awakened by a Fist: An Immigrant Narrative of Psychocultural Integration” describes the author’s reflections on the symbolic, psychocultural meaning of her immigration experiences. She focuses on a dream image that emerged decades after immigration upon crossing into a third cultural group—that of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco as a candidate—and describes how cultural complexes are individually absorbed from the country of origin and entwined with those in the new culture. An immigrant’s mental well-being requires acceptance of life in the liminal mental space between continuity and change, between belonging and separating, and between the freedom and necessity to create.