The relationship of the psychologist with immigrant families is complex, because of the numerous reappraisals about identity and desires towards the other which it sub-tends. This relationship is still harder to create and to invest when the conflict which the immigrant is living with is essentially expressed as suffering which the environment of the host country imposes upon him. By refusing his own participation in this view of his environment, the immigrant tries, in order to protect himself, to avoid any definition of the conflict as inherent in any relationship with another. In this article, the authors try to show how the evocation of the conflict as expressed by the immigrant, if it is not recognized by the psychologist as the only possible expression of ill-being, favorises acts of relational violence leading frequently to the rupture of this relationship. According to the authors, this rupture marks the impossibility on either side to recognize the existence of a conflict from which might arise a desire and an exchange with the other.

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violence ethnic or racial aspects clinical article psychological aspect desire conflict human adult Social Environment migration Child