How do the children of migrant workers deal with the extreme mental stress they are exposed to, particularly if their parents displayed padiogenic personality structures prior to migration and migration itself stood in some causal connection with such disorders? The in-depth case history discussed here is one in which the pathological features of the parents and the disorientation and confusion caused by migration made them unable to fulfill a protective and sustaining function for their child. Accordingly, that child (the patient) was unable to introject this protective function and develop a protective space. Together with the inability to cope with the migration trauma itself, these deficits made it difficult for the patient to negotiate the various stages of development: each of them was accompanied by disastrous anxieties and setbacks. Akhough these setbacks initially resembled a negative therapeutic reaction, the author doubts that they were in fact manifestations of such a reaction. It transpired that the patient needed these apparent setbacks as a kind of safety net. Every step toward the new, idealized, and desired world had to be followed by a step «back» into the old, restrictive, but reassuringly familiar world of the parents.

Splitting Migration Negative therapeutic reaction Autonomy Belonging

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