Chapter 5 in the book Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, Representation talks about the meaning of ‘home’, although as related to working women etc (see online link here). i was recently thinking that i need to find some literature about the archetype of home, as it realted to my theory about the links about the sense of ‘at-homeness’ and relationship to culture and mobility etc. I shall be looking into Jungian literature about this. Hestia in Greek thought is a good start, here is a link to start from

As i am looking for some quotes to prepate my presentation for the counselling conference in India this January, i came accross this book, written by an Indian psychoanalyst:

Kakar, S. (1982) Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: a Psychological Inquiry into India and Its Healing Traditions. the University of Chigago Press. I am recording some useful extracts: … Read more »

Here is a list of books from our library that i want to make time to look at for my literature review: … Read more »

Lijtmaer, R.M. (2001). Countertransference and Ethnicity: The Analyst’s Psychic Changes. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal., 29:73-83.abstract:

It is impossible to think of identity without its ethnic nature. A culturally influenced worldview is established in each individual, which is strongly grounded in by a growing assemble of symbolic rituals where specific cultural values are transmitted (Javier and Rendon, 1995). These basic belief systems and culturally specific ways of relating are programmed to provide the foundation for the development of identity. Ethnicity’s being part of our identity represents a combination of reality and fantasy that lends itself to psychoanalytic scrutiny.

In instances of individuals whose self-identity was influenced by a society that demands a different level of interaction than do the values of the Western culture, the nature of the transference-countertransference will be affected. The more dissimilar the respective worlds of the members of the dyad, the more the work must be undertaken as a joint search for understanding.

Lijtmaer, R.M. (1999). Language Shift and Bilinguals: Transference and Countertransference implications. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal., 27:611-624.Abstract:

A bilingual female patient started a session in Spanish. She had been in therapy for a year, and previously English had been her language of choice. At first I was startled and did not know what made her switch to her first language. I wondered what had happened during the previous session to make her switch languages. I questioned her about it. The patient’s response was that remembering the childhood experience of not being heard by her mother (which she related half in English and half in Spanish), made her aware of all the things that she could tell me more emotionally (“from my guts”), in Spanish. She also became conscious of her cautiousness of using Spanish for fear I would not understand her. With this statement, the patient was cognizant of the emotional connotations of her first language and after some time, the transferential implications of her statement. Is this kind of interaction, language switching, a common occurrence in a bilingual analysis?