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Identity and Immigration. From Ulysses’ Syndrome to the Identity Construct and their Cultural Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2020

E. Garcia
Affiliation:
Psychiatry- General Hospital Toledo, Addictive Conducts Unit, Toledo, Spain
R. Moreno
Affiliation:
Sermas, CSM Vallecas, Madrid, Spain
B. Tarjuelo
Affiliation:
Infanta Sofía Hospital- San Sebastián de los Reyes, Brief Hospitalation Unit, Madrid, Spain

Abstract

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Immigration is one well known but complex stressor. When we analyze its consequences, we discover the loss of social or family support, the need to afford a new unknown and many times hostile perceived environment, or languages/communications problems. Greek myths have been used as a way to explain how men afford that kind of events/monsters. However as cultural productions, myths grow and change trying to reflex the culture, society and time when they are used. Identity has been a main question for many disciplines, psychiatry has wondered about its construction but society has too, and sometimes last explanations are even better than clinical ones. We would like to discuss the inmigration phenomena using anthropology tools, which previously have nourish other psychiatric disciplines as systemic therapy. If we want to be able to treat immigrants, we have not only to fulfill their physical needs or treat their mental symptoms but to look every travel as a risk one, in which as Ulysses they are at risk of losing what they are, their identity. Identity is described in old Greece as the life lived with others, but not any other person, just those who know us and may accept our own images. In the past, the city, our born place, as a social support was what made us humans. Ulysses, out of Ithaca, found monsters, those who weren’t humans, because they didn’t live in his Greek society. As the new Ulysses, the immigrant maybe should be first helped to construct a new identity, which makes monsters disappear.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Type
e-Poster viewing: Migration and mental health of immigrants
Copyright
Copyright © European Psychiatric Association 2017
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