Inner and Outer Travels: Analytical Psychology and the Treatment of Refugees

Due to massive migratory flows of the last decades, the clinical psycho-therapeutic practice is more and more measuring itself against its potential to be used, with some adaptation, with people coming from other cultures. This article explores the capability of analytical psychology to appreciate the refugees' experience: to what extent is this use of a Western theory of mind legitimate to explore and understand people who come from other cultural contexts? Is it significant to them? Some archetypal themes crucial to refugees are explored: the existential condition of exile, the mythical theme of the hero as describing the process of individuation, the interplay of individual and collective identity in the lived sense of exclusion and nostalgia, the narrative of one's experience as a symbolic return to one's own home. These dimensions of refugee-dom are understood as part of the process of individuation, an inner and outer travel, which passes through the perilous vicissitudes of life and Self in its relationship with Ego and complexes. This is exemplified with a vignette that shows a desirable development of the refugee's experience.