Imigration, language and psychic suffering

Migration is not merely a change of country.

It is a change of language, references, social codes, and sometimes of the position one once occupied in the world.

Something that sustained everyday life — bonds, recognition, familiarity — is lost or transformed.

Many people living outside their country of origin describe a form of distress that is difficult to name. It is not simply sadness or anxiety, but a sense of misalignment, of not belonging, of estrangement from oneself and from others. Life goes on, yet something seems unable to keep pace.

The literature on migration shows that the migratory process is often associated with experiences of symbolic loss, the rupture of support networks, and a constant need for adaptation. This set of factors can produce psychological suffering even when the move was desired or carefully planned. What is lost is not always clear — and for that very reason, it can be difficult to elaborate.

In clinical practice, the immigrant’s suffering often appears indirectly: through difficulty in expressing oneself, persistent exhaustion, family conflicts, the feeling of constantly “translating” oneself, or the impression that something of one’s own desire has been suspended between one place and another.

Psychoanalysis does not aim to normalize the migratory experience, nor to offer ready-made answers for adaptation. Rather, it offers a space of listening in which what has not yet found words — or what was lost in the crossing — can begin to be spoken. A space in which the subject can question what has changed, what has been lost, what has been repeated, and what may still be constructed.

Speaking a foreign language may be necessary in everyday life when living in another country, but it is not always sufficient to articulate what touches the most intimate. At the same time, for some, speaking in another language can create a distance that makes certain experiences more bearable. This can be seen, for instance, in Lacan, Encore, testimony of an analysis, in which an entire analysis was carried by a Brazilian woman in French. There, one can understand that reaching the mother tongue required passing through this bridge. Providing clinical care in another language is therefore not merely a technical choice, but part of the clinical work itself when possible.

This gives rise to questions such as:

Who am I away from the place I come from?

What has been lost, and what has been transformed?

What, in this experience, is a matter of choice?

Not in order to eliminate conflict, but to allow it to be elaborated and inscribed in each person’s history, rather than remaining as a silent weight.