How did Heinz Kohut's experiences as an exile from the place of his birth and a "refugee" of trauma affect the development of self psychology? In this paper, the authors link the experience of homelessness, which has been termed "the pervasive malady of our time," and trauma. They conjecture that Kohut's life experiences helped him to plumb the depths of the "fractured, enfeebled, discontinuous" aspects of human experience and allowed him to appreciate the centrality of longings for empathic connectedness. In a healing analytic relationship, they contend, patient and analyst develop a shared language-partly verbal, partly nonverbal-by means of which excruciating experiences of sameness and difference become bearable. A clinical example illustrates that the terms exile and homesickness may be both apt metaphors for trauma and actual experiences. © 2012 Copyright The International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.

Homesickness Homelessness Exile language of homecoming trauma

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