OBSERVATION
481
oriented techniques are helpful. But insofar as the participants men–
tioned psychoanalytic theories at all, they did so in a laid-back manner,
rather than in the controversial way we have gotten accustomed to in
the debates among ego-psychologists, self-psychologists, Freud-bashers,
defenders of Jungian, relational, classical Freudian, interactional, and
all the other therapeutic denominations. The focus was on how to emo–
tionally connect to patients, and to one another. The one hundred and
eighty persons who had pre-registered identified themselves as coun–
selors, ana Iytica I psychotherapists, trainees, psych ia trists, group psy–
chotherapists, student counselors, senior lecturers, freelance writers,
linguists, Jungian analysts, political analysts, lecturers, retired teachers,
clinical linguists, language teachers, social workers, and translators.
There also was a publisher, a mental health nurse, a law lecturer, a Por–
tuguese education attache, a professor of human geography, and a com–
pany director. What they all shared was an interest in, and most likely
the experience of, exile-a childhood they needed to bring back to
themsel ves, to reinterpret how they came from "there" to "here," and
an urge to know what to tell their children about their origins.
All of the speakers had been thinking and talking about immigration
and displacement for a long time; they, themselves, had been uprooted
as children, some of them more than once, and only much later had
dealt with the adjustments to their new language(s), and with the grief
and humiliations they then had suppressed. But none of them saw them–
selves as victims, more as lucky survivors of unlucky circumstances:
after all, they had overcome some of their pain, and had transformed it
to succeed in what we call the real world. The majority of speakers, who
were in (or aspired to) therapeutic occupations, were using their child–
hood trauma to help others with theirs. We even spoke of the advan–
tages one gains when multilingual, of the expanded understanding that
comes instinctively when crossing from one language to another. As
children we could not know that, and felt only the hurts, the humilia–
tions and embarrassments experienced as outsiders. And the stings,
when classmates laughed at us, when we did not understand what was
anticipated, or did not live up to expectations we had of ourselves.
On the first day of the conference the contributions remained pri–
marily on an intellectual level, as the persons in this large gathering were
feeling their way. On the second day, however, the ice was broken:
speakers and audience now had the courage to talk from, what for want
of a better formulation, were their hearts and souls. People now spoke
out on what they still had trouble formulating . What· better means, I
kept reflecting, to learn that these Argentines and Angolans, Cubans
