Clin Soc Work J (2013) 41:11–19 DOI 10.1007/s10615-011-0372-z
ORIGINAL PAPER
Culture and Language: Bilingualism in the German–Jewish Experience and Across Contexts Roger Frie
Published online: 25 November 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract This paper argues for the inherent connection between language and culture in the therapeutic setting, which is illustrated using an example of a bilingual therapy. It examines the bilingual interaction between a German-speaking second-generation Holocaust survivor and a German-speaking analyst of German descent. By paying attention to the shifts between German and English, it is possible to see how the therapeutic process is grounded in the culture and language of its participants. Using a hermeneutic perspective, this paper suggests that culture and history are disclosed in language in ways that are often outside of conscious awareness. The intersubjective nature of bilingual therapy is demonstrated by the fact that both client and analyst are participants in the process of language shifting. The role of language and the function of culture is considered across therapeutic contexts. Keywords Bilingualism Code switching Culture Identity German–Jewish history Holocaust
Culture does not merely influence how we act, think or feel. Culture permeates every aspect of human experience. Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, like their clients, are inalterably shaped by their cultures. Using a hermeneutic perspective (Gadamer 1975; Taylor 1989), I suggest that how we see ourselves, how we respond to others, and how we experience the world around us is a direct effect of culture. When culture is understood as only one of multiple contexts of development, we overlook the degree to which R. Frie (&) Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Blvd., Burnaby, BC, Canada e-mail:
[email protected]
we are all inescapably embedded in cultures, histories, and languages that are not of our own making. Each of us is born into and emerges in a cultural context of language and social practice. Language and speech situate us in family, history and tradition. Psychoanalysis has traditionally played down the role of culture in human experience. In the United States, the historical preoccupation with psychoanalysis as a medical science meant that the question of culture was largely ignored (Kowalik 2009; Molino 2004). The focus on culture was seen as the purview of anthropology, which could do little to advance a properly scientific account of the analytic situation. The traditional focus on the client’s intrapsychic experience meant that sociocultural contexts were seen as separate and of secondary importance. From a hermeneutic perspective, however, the individual can never be separated from her surround. The embeddedness of the individual in sociocultural contexts is so profound as to render any absolute distinction of person from context nonsensical. As Muller (1996) states, ‘‘The constitutive role of culture has been neglected by the individualistic orientation of American psychology as it was as by ego psychology and the more recent dyadic focus of psychoanalysis. We are coming to realize, however, that a third is required to frame the dyad, to provide an orienting structure, and this third may be understood as the semiotic framework and context of culture’’ (p. 2). Culture is always present in the clinical setting, just as language provides the medium within which experience unfolds. Language is central to the therapeutic process because it enables us to be heard and conveys the response of the other person whom we address. As a linguistic undertaking psychoanalysis gives voice to the cultures, histories and identities of its participants. In the therapeutic setting, we not only speak through language, it is also the
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case that language discloses our cultures, histories and identities in ways that we may not be aware of. The aim of this paper is to examine the conscious and unconscious interplay of culture and language, using as an illustration a therapy between a German-speaking second generation Holocaust survivor and a German-speaking analyst of German descent. The client and the analyst are both bilingual in German and English and the analysis proceeds through a series of language shifts that reveal the cultural and historical similarities and differences at work. Although, the case example is culturally specific, I will argue that the cultural differences between the client and analyst, and how language is used as a way of dealing with and eventually bridging those differences, are relevant to practitioners across contexts. My objective is to elaborate specifically those aspects of the treatment that illustrate the centrality of culture and language for the therapeutic process and thus to shed light on the psychodynamics of bilingualism.1 I will suggest that by paying attention to the language shifts, it is possible to appreciate how deeply culture and history are embedded in the analytic setting. The fact that both client and analyst participate in the language shifts also demonstrates the fundamentally intersubjective nature of the analytic process. I begin by examining psychoanalytic perspectives of bilingualism and suggest the need for a more fully developed intersubjective approach to the issue of culture and language that can account for the role of contexts as well as agency in the structuring of personal experience.
Bilingualism and Psychoanalysis The notion that the individual develops through language in interaction with the Other was present from the very start of psychoanalysis. It was Anna O. the subject of the first psychoanalytic case study (Breuer and Freud 1895), who famously referred to the psychoanalytic method as a ‘‘talking cure.’’ Indeed, chief among Anna O.’s many symptoms was a difficulty with speech. After the death of her father, Breuer and Freud (1895) states that Anna O. ‘‘spoke only English and could not understand what was said to her in German … She was, however, able to read French and Italian. If she had to read one of these aloud, what she produced, with extraordinary fluency, was an admirable extempore English translation’’ (p. 26). The case of Anna O. illustrates the role of different languages in the shifting psychological experience of the client. When Anna 1
I have discussed the analyst’s countertransference and its impact on the case elsewhere (Frie 2011); I will focus on countertransference factors here specifically as they relate to the use and role of language in the therapeutic process.
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O. stopped speaking her native German, English became the means of communication, a second language for both the client and analyst. Bilingualism was an integral, if largely unexplored aspect of early psychoanalytic work. Freud was a monolingual German-speaking analyst, and German was a second language for most of his English-speaking clients. Other early European psychoanalysts conducted analyses in their second or even third languages. Yet issues such as cultural attunement, difference and identity involved in a second-language analysis were not considered significant until much later. For Freud and early psychoanalysis, analytic speech was seen as a specific goal-directed form of communication. Within the analytic setting, language provided a means to access the unconscious through free association, jokes, and slips of the tongue. The main focus of psychoanalysis was on the determining factors such as childhood history and libidinal impulses, not on cultural differences embodied in the communication. Today psychoanalysts understand that these differences can themselves have a determining influence on the course of a treatment and need to be examined and discussed. The relative distance of early psychoanalysis from other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and linguistics also meant that it would be some time before language was understood as encompassing the situated cultural and historical outlooks of the client and analyst. Jacques Lacan’s (1977) famous re-reading of Freud in terms of language offers a way of thinking about the social and linguistic construction of the self. Like his English-speaking colleagues, however, Lacan does not elaborate the notion of culture at any length, leaving this topic to anthropologists. The first psychoanalytic studies of bilingualism took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The works of Buxbaum (1949), Greenson (1950) and Kraph (1955) focused on the way in which a client’s native language could evoke emotionally laden memories. Greenson (1950), in particular, suggested that the native language created conditions that allowed for the retrieval of specific memories that were unavailable in the second language. Conversely, the client’s second language was often considered a means to defend against early fantasy and memory. While classical psychoanalytic studies emphasize the developmental imprint of language on early childhood experience, today it is widely accepted that language acquisition occurs through a dynamic interpersonal and interactive process between parent and child within specific sociocultural contexts. As Vygotsky (1978) states: ‘‘Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the societal level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)’’ (p. 57). For bilinguals,
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speaking in one’s native tongue evokes not only the developmental interactive experience with the caregiver but also the sociocultural contexts in which this development occurred. Early development is thus a reflection of the cultural and social contexts in which it occurs. At the same time, Vygotsky underlines the importance of personal agency in the process of linguistic and cultural development. As children develop, they begin to be capable of making choices regarding the degree to which they identify and express specific cultural beliefs and practices, a process that becomes more pronounced in adolescence with identity development and then occurs in an ongoing way throughout adulthood. While bilingualism reflects the person’s embeddedness in multiple linguistic and cultural contexts, it also involves an agentic process through which the individual negotiates and makes choices that impact her experience of linguistic and cultural worlds (Frie 2008). Bilingualism has been much studied in the context of the client’s experience, but language shifting also always involves the analyst. The analyst’s reactions and responses to language shifts, together with her use of the first or second language, form an important part of the therapeutic process. From an intersubjective viewpoint, the client’s and analyst’s subjectivities can be understood as unfolding narratives that are shaped through dialogue and interaction in the analytic setting. With each language shift, both participants are pulled into new linguistic and affective spaces. When working bilingually, therefore, it is important to track how language shifting involves both participants in the analysis. Why, for example, does the client or analyst choose to speak or respond in one language or the other? Does the analyst initiate her own language shifts, whether consciously or not? What does the choice of language convey about cultural identification, personal history and emotional experience of the client or analyst in moments of language shifting? With these questions in mind, I will focus on the way in which cultural similarities and differences are disclosed in the bilingual interaction of the client and analyst.
Culture and Language in the German–Jewish Experience: A Case Illustration Daniel was referred to me because he was looking for a German-speaking analyst. From the referral, I knew that Daniel was Jewish, had grown up in Austria, and had recently immigrated. He was in his 40s and in a committed relationship, which was the reason for his immigration. Daniel struggled with anxiety, periods of depression, and feelings of anger, that he thought might be linked with his history. Daniel grew up in a Jewish family with a sick mother who died early on and a father who was a Holocaust survivor.
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While both parents survived the war, his mother’s early death meant that Daniel knew relatively little of her experiences. His father was known to be a concentration camp survivor who frequently raged at the many threats, real or imagined, that he constantly perceived. Daniel’s father had grown up in an orthodox household before the war and his mother came from a well-to-do family that somehow survived the war. Daniel perceived their suffering, but their past was blanketed by silence. Doris Laub refers to this silence as ‘‘the impossibility of telling,’’ in which ‘‘silence about the truth commonly prevails.’’ Holocaust survivors, according to Laub, ‘‘do not find peace in silence, even when it is their choice to remain silent.’’ (Felman and Laub 1992, p. 79). There were some stories that circulated within the Jewish community about his father’s concentration camp experiences, but Daniel knew almost nothing first-hand from his father. The one story Daniel remembers is that after being liberated by the Russians, his father was given the opportunity to take up arms and kill Nazis; apparently he was a fearsome fighter who met with much success. Daniel had one younger brother and described his childhood as miserable, punctuated by rare happy early memories of his mother, before her sudden death when he was 10 years old. Until he left for university, Daniel and his brother lived alone with their father in near isolation, often in a state of terror, with little or no contact to anyone outside the home. Like Daniel, German was my first language and I looked forward to undertaking an analysis in German. Yet when I learned of Daniel’s history, I was also nervous about what tensions might emerge as our different cultural histories became known. While we both spoke German, I was entering into our work with the weight of historical guilt and shame connected to my German background (Habermas 1989). I am the son of Germans who were a part of the postwar wave of immigrants to Canada. As a bilingual and bicultural child in Canada I grew up in close contact to the German immigrant community and to my extended family in Germany. When I was in high school, my parents moved back to Europe, first to Switzerland, where I lived for some time, and then to Germany. My development was defined by the experience of two languages and two cultures. As Pe´rez Foster (1992) states, ‘‘bilingual and bicultural (persons) possess two language codes with which they can think about themselves, express ideas, and interact with the people in their world. This duality is a unique characteristic of bilingual individuals. It is a fundamental factor that affects their lives and must surely impact on how they go about narrating their life story in the treatment process’’ (p. 62). This theme of two languages also applied to Daniel, who was fluent in German and English. Daniel grew up in Austria, was schooled partly in English and attended university in England. Ironically, as I was
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to learn, Daniel and I attended the same university and studied similar topics. The parallels were noteworthy. We spent our childhoods on different continents, yet had both grown up speaking German and English, and shared common experiences. But our similarities ran up against deepseated historical differences, grounded in the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. While I was the son of Germans, Daniel was a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Questions of similarity and difference, of culture and history, were present from the very beginning of our work. In the initial session, Daniel inquired about my background and my grasp of German. I explored the question and answered, though without going into much detail. I told him that I had grown up in Canada, that my family was German-speaking, and that I had lived in Switzerland. Having asked about my training, Daniel also knew that I lived and worked in Germany as a student. Some time later, when Daniel described his upbringing, he wondered if I might be Jewish. I asked what meaning my answer might have for him. Daniel said that if I were Jewish I might understand him better. But he added that his partner was not Jewish and it was thus unlikely to stand in the way of work. I left the question unanswered, not wanting to forestall exploration of what my identity could mean. But I also remember feeling anxious that exploration of my identity would inevitably lead to questions about my German background. It was almost as though Daniel had asked his questions in a way that created a sense of safety for both of us. Daniel spoke English fluently, yet most of our communication took place in German. Daniel was pleased to be speaking German. There were few people with whom he could speak it and his emotional and dream life was rooted in his mother tongue. I was at first nervous about how Daniel would respond to my German, as it is no longer as fluent as it once was and I now speak with an accent. But my concerns were seemingly not shared by Daniel who said that he missed speaking German. From a developmental perspective, German was the primary language of Daniel’s childhood and attachments, whereas English was the language of learning, of school and university. In our work together, English could feel like the language of the intellect and was used often used by Daniel to distance himself from difficult emotions or memories. As Amati Mehler (1995) points out, speaking a second language permits the construction of ‘‘a safety barrier against emotions, sensations, and affects, in which the mother tongue is deeply rooted and embedded’’ (p. 97). Studies of bilingualism (Pe´rez Foster 1998; Schrauf 2000) suggest that emotion and memory in the first language are often stronger and more present than in the second language. In our sessions, Daniel would sometimes speak in English when he described his feelings of sadness
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and resentment about his father. As I listened to him, I formed images of what I imagined the interactions between the two of them were like. When he actually expressed the feelings of sadness or anger, Daniel would shift into German. As a result, the images I formed became more vibrant and filled with emotion. These language shifts took place largely outside of Daniel’s awareness and illustrate the way in which shifting to German enabled him to communicate his emotion in a more experience-near manner. By observing the language shifting at work with Daniel, I also learned to recognize the importance of my language choice for maintaining emotional attunement. When my response in German was attuned to his expression of emotion in German, it opened up an emotional space for exploration and reflection. When I responded to his emotional pain or grief, I likewise expressed my feelings in German. In such moments it felt as though our engagement was more affectively integrated. By contrast, my response in English could redirect away from the presence of the emotion. It is important to note that the experience of language and emotion was as real for me as it was for my client. Indeed language shifts into the analyst’s mother tongue can have a powerful resonance for the analyst. In her study of bilingualism, Pe´rez Foster (1992) captures the nature of this process: The release of richer, more affect-laden early material is not all I hear when the client speaks his or her native tongue, or switches from English to the native language in session. There is a much more powerful and emotionally palpable phenomenon that occurs— for the transference and its ensuing countertransferential complement switches … My signal that this phenomenon has taken place is not only the music of the new language, but often my own transformation in the presence of the client, who somehow in a linguistic instant can sculpt me into another (pp. 68–69). The transference-countertransferential complement to language shifting described by Pe´rez-Foster became an important element in the growth of the therapeutic relationship between Daniel and me. The emotional attunement and the resonances of our interactions in German allowed the relationship to evolve. But this mutuality was to be tested in the exploration of our cultural differences.
Exploring Cultural Difference in Language It wasn’t easy for Daniel to express his curiosity about me. Nor did my hesitancy to talk about my background lend him any encouragement. The state of our interaction in some ways mirrored the struggle Daniel had with his
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father. As our work progressed Daniel began to wonder about his father’s experiences and background, and acknowledged his desire to be closer to him. Yet he was also scared that getting to know his father better would lend credence to his childhood fears of a man given to spontaneous and terrible rages. The difficulty, according to Daniel, was that he could not talk to his father, let alone ask him questions. The parallels to the relationship between Daniel and me were tangible. When I look back at this stage of our work together, it is clear that the guilt and shame I felt about my background and my fear of being perceived as the bad German, even a Nazi, made it difficult for me to reveal my background. For example, when Daniel spoke about the little he knew of his father’s experiences in the concentration camp, the material was very painful to hear. I found myself wishing at times that we could change the subject, though I also recognized the emotional importance of what Daniel had to say. The guilt I felt about my reaction to hearing the experiences of Daniel’s father was intertwined with, and compounded by, the shame I felt about my German background. I remember being conscious of how I sounded, even the tone of my voice.2 I wondered at times whether my German could sound like that of the aggressor. Would my voice carry resonances of the concentration camp guards experienced by his father? Might the power differentials and prejudices that so tragically determined the course of German–Jewish relations come into play in our work together? And if talk of the war and of my past happened too soon, would it create roadblocks for the treatment? Daniel must have been aware of my considerable anxieties. Throughout the first year of the analysis he would make references to my Swiss background and allude to the fact that I was Swiss. Whenever this happened, I experienced considerable discomfort. While I lived in Switzerland, I did not identify myself as Swiss. Nor did I speak with a Swiss accent. Yet in these moments I no doubt wished to be in some way Swiss-German; the promise of neutrality and a kind of safe haven was very appealing. Perhaps I was seeking to make myself appear different, other than I was, and communicating this to Daniel. As Gorkin (1986, 1996) points out in his study of Arab–Jewish therapeutic interactions, when therapists convey to their clients that they stand apart, then the treatment situation becomes akin to an ‘‘island’’ where ethnic tension and guilt supposedly do not exist. When this happens, discussion of guilt, responsibility, and shame is forestalled. Yet what the 2
When thinking about the role of language and speech in psychoanalytic practice, it is important to consider the notion of ‘‘voice.’’ No two voices are the same, and each enunciation carries affective layerings in its tone and volume; these may convey the memory of closeness and tenderness, or of distance, anger and fear.
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therapist herself, or the therapist and client together may disavow will still be experienced, perceived and enacted in other ways. Indeed, I believe that our different histories were in some way present from the very start—they just weren’t being talked about. Though Daniel and I found connection in the German language, it is a language fraught with history. I feared what an upsurge of traumatic memory in German might mean. Greenson (1950) describes this phenomenon when he writes about a German-English bilingual woman who reported having a dream in German. When Greenson encouraged her to continue in German, the woman responded: ‘‘I am afraid. I don’t want to talk German. I have the feeling that in talking German I shall have to remember something that I wanted to forget’’ (p. 19). For German–Jews in particular, the German language became the site of trauma and painful memory. Among German–Jewish e´migre´s to North America, the German language evoked powerful feelings and memories linked to their exile and the Holocaust. Exploring the phenomenon of language attrition among these e´migre´s, Monika Schmid (2003) notes that the date of emigration from Germany was correlated with the maintenance of the German language; the later German–Jewish e´migre´s left Germany, the less they maintained their German over time. Yet as Schmid (2003) points out, for many German–Jewish e´migre´s, ‘‘the German language may have been the last link to their parents, the only thing left that their parents had given them’’ (p. 151). For many German Jews, German was indelibly linked to the Holocaust and could be too threatening to speak. Daniel and I were interacting in the present, far removed from events of the Second World War. Although, Daniel was a native German speaker and I was a second-generation German immigrant, our dialogue in German still evoked feelings that were powerful and palpable. Indeed, Daniel’s confusion about the extent to which I spoke Swiss-German raises the issue of cultural identifications and their connection to language. We both at times shared a desire that I might be Swiss, which suggests that analytic speech is not only culturally determinative, it is also a place of unspoken wishes. As the analysis progressed, Daniel became more cognizant of others and how their actions affected him. Within the context of the therapeutic dyad, Daniel noted for the first time that I did not speak German with a Swiss accent. Once he allowed himself to be openly curious, questions followed in quick succession. How was it that I spoke German so well if I did not grow up in Europe? Were my parents German, Swiss or Canadian? And if they were from Germany, what did they do during the war? I felt I could no longer waffle in my response; Daniel expected his questions to be answered. I shared that my parents had been children during the war.
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Daniel then asked about my grandparents. While I have always felt an ethical and personal conviction to remember my German past, this sense of responsibility did not lesson the feelings of shame or make talking about my background with Daniel any easier. I felt caught in the inescapable legacy of my family’s history and of my grandparents’ lives. I shared with Daniel that both my grandfathers fought in the German army. My paternal grandfather died in battle early on while my maternal grandfather worked in the domestic armaments industry and survived the war. As far as I know, my grandparents belonged to the majority of German citizens; bystanders in the presence of unspeakable crimes. It was difficult for me to share these facts and I remember feeling anxious about how Daniel would respond to this information. Daniel appeared to accept what I shared at face value. Significantly, the entire discussion—Daniel’s questions, my answers, the exploration of fantasies—took place in English. It was as though we both found speaking English easier. Whereas speaking English had previously seemed foreign, speaking German now felt out of place. The fact that Daniel and I both participated in this shift demonstrates the intersubjective context of working therapeutically across languages. As Pe´rez Foster (1998) points out: ‘‘Starting at a basic experiential level of affect, attunement and contagion, both members are pulled into a sensorial space, an altered mood state, some might say, which is evoked by the simple sensual prosody of the new language presence in the room’’ (p. 71). Whereas our shifts into German had often been accompanied with a vibrancy of emotion, in this instance, the shift into English was accompanied by a different mood-state, which might best be described as reticent and inhibited. The following sessions ranged over a number of topics having to do with Daniel’s relationship, with work and with family, but did not return to what he had learned about me. These sessions, like our initial exploration of the past, occurred in English. I was hesitant to share these observations with Daniel. I did not want to leave our sheltered ‘‘island’’ (Gorkin 1986,1996) and enter into a discussion of cultural difference with potential conflict. But I felt compelled to observe that we no longer spoke German together. Daniel’s response, in English, was brief: ‘‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’’ I wondered whether speaking English might have to do with our discussion of the past, of family, Germany and the Holocaust. According to Daniel, we were both secondgeneration and the German–Jewish issue had been well examined. I responded affirmatively, yet it remained curious that he no longer spoke in German. Might this have to do with how he felt about what he had learned about me? It seemed to me at the time that we were now engaged in a monolingual analysis. The question of German, be it personal, cultural or linguistic, was virtually absent.
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In fact, Daniel and I were engaging in a stance of emotional distancing through language. The shift into English provided a kind of barrier against threatening affective experience. But English would also become a means of navigating the gap between us. English enabled us to talk about, and explore the meaning of what happened in each of our family histories and of what this might imply for our work together. Whereas German was the language of our parents and the location of our development, English was the language of our present-day lives. While the shift to English was initially unconscious, our continued dialogue in English was grounded on an emergent sense of agency in the midst of emotional uncertainty. By choosing to speak in English, we were able to consider the historical past from the perspective of our current lives. Speaking English was thus not a deficit, but rather, provided us a different perspective and an emotional space where we were able to bridge our cultural differences. Above all, English provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what Germany and the German language meant for us. For Daniel, the complexity of the German language can not be underestimated. As his mother tongue, German was the language of his upbringing and emotional development. It was the language of his mother’s expressions of affection, just as it was the medium of his father’s terrifying rages. German was the language of family and heritage and the language of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the language spoken by the concentration camp guards that imprisoned his father. When Daniel left home to escape his father and childhood, he sought refuge in an Englishspeaking world. For Daniel, the English language represented the promise of a location free of his father’s emotional turmoil and the lingering anti-Semitism of the Austrian society in which he grew up. English was the language of his newly adopted home, charting a path of immigration. Like Daniel, I experienced the German language as the site of my childhood and family memory and of learning and culture. German was the language of childhood visits to and from Germany and of a sense of connection with, as well as geographical separation from, family members. But as I become more historically aware, my relation to the German language was affected by the knowledge that my family belonged to the German majority that stood by in the face of the atrocities committed under the Nazi regime. Despite my anxieties, speaking German with Daniel came naturally. I found myself taking it for granted over time, so that at the moment of Daniel’s shift to English, it was as though I was suddenly confronted with the historical reality that had always been implicit in our interactions and was now fully explicit. This was, I imagined, a kind of transitioning that Daniel had navigated his entire life: despite the fact that German was his mother tongue, it also
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embodied a tragic and terrifying past, which was always in some way present in his everyday interactions, even if it was not fully articulated. Indeed, the complexity of Daniel’s association to German is evident in the fact that he sought out a German-speaking analyst. When I later asked him about his choice to speak German with me, he said it reflected his desire to be able to fully express himself bilingually, to combine his past with his present. This integration of the past into the present was facilitated by speaking English together and eventually permitted a return to German. Daniel and I worked to confront the distrust that was rooted in the historical and traumatic past, a process made possible by our ability to speak two languages, each with a different and distinct set of meanings and representations. I shared with Daniel my sense of guilt and shame about my family’s past and how these feelings had made it difficult for me to be more open. The revelation of my struggle with the past helped Daniel feel that he could more openly discuss his feeling about his family’s history and our interactions. There came a point in our work, following this period of reflection, when it seemed that we no longer consciously avoided speaking German. I followed Daniel’s lead, feeling that it was important that he develop a sense of comfort in speaking German with me, rather than initiating the shift I myself. The re-emergence of German into our work was gradual and took place largely outside of awareness. I realized at some point that German had become a part of our vocabulary again. When I observed this change with Daniel, he said it felt good to speak German with me. Whereas he had been reticent about speaking German, given the historical contexts of our work, German felt once more like a part of the everyday—indeed, it felt to both of us that German was no longer determined or dominated by the past. We had reached a point in our work where either language, English or German, could begin carrying the weight of the past and or the interactions of the present. We spoke each language effectively and affectively, with an awareness of the meanings and resonance of each, in a kind of free-flowing back and forth that mirrored a movement of mutuality and dialogue.
Language and Culture Across Contexts I have used my work with Daniel to emphasize and examine the degree to which the therapeutic process is grounded in culture and language. Drawing on a hermeneutic perspective (Gadamer 1975; Taylor 1989), I have suggested that the intersubjective field of psychoanalysis is inextricably linked with the culture and language of its participants in ways that are often outside of conscious
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awareness. While the issue of cultural difference is clearly pronounced in the German–Jewish experience, the way language is used to deal cultural difference is relevant across therapeutic contexts and dyads. In my concluding remarks I outline briefly the evolving response to culture and language in psychoanalysis and suggest that culture is manifest in the differential use of language even when the client and therapist share a similar background and speak the same language. I have argued the language is more than a conveyer of communicative meaning or personal expression. Listening to the language used by the client, and being aware of one’s own use of language in the interplay of address and response, can provide a means to understand the contextual dynamics at work in a person’s psychological life and in the therapeutic interactions between the client and therapist more generally. Indeed, our individual psychologies cannot in any meaningful way be separated from the contexts in which we live and develop. Our use of language is a key illustration of this fact; language embodies and conveys the contexts of its speakers, which always include such dynamics as culture, power, history and family. More often than not these dynamics are implicit to our experience of the world: the influences of culture and tradition are an inescapable part of our world view. For the clinician who works with a population that is bilingual or competent in two or more languages, language use can be particularly revealing of culture and its effects. Because languages are culturally embedded practices (Bourdieu 1990), working bilingually means working across cultures. Recent psychoanalytic studies of bilingualism (Amati Mehler 1995; Amati Mehler et al. 1993; Hill 2008; Javier 1995; Pe´rez Foster 1992, 1998; Marcos 1976; Rozensky and Gomez 1983) reflect the growing appreciation of culture in the analytic setting, as well as the shifting demographic of analytic clients. In the North American context an ever-increasing number of clients are individuals for whom English is a second language. These individuals are often immigrant and ethnic minorities undergoing a process of acculturation. For these clients, speaking English as a second language can provide a means of achieving distance from experiences associated with one’s native culture, can create a safety barrier against affect and memory, and may offer the opportunity to forge a new identity. At the same time, shifting back to one’s native language can help these clients maintain psychologically meaningful links to the past by evoking relational experiences associated with their culture of origin, and can help in the maintenance of an immigrant, minority identity. On this view, language shifting, whether into English or back to the native language, can reveal meaningful emotional experiences.
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While dual language users make conscious choices about which language to speak at any given time, I have argued that language shifting also occurs outside of conscious awareness. As a result, language users both shape the course of conversation and are carried along and shaped by it (Frie 2008). From a developmental perspective, the use of a particular language can reflect the developmental history of early interactions with caregivers from whom the child learns a particular language or style of speaking. Over time, languages take on personal meaning that influence self-experience and affect our interactions with others. From a hermeneutic perspective, the person never exists in isolation but only in reference to her surroundings. Similarly, meaning is not something contained in the individual mind but is socially mediated in a process of speaking and understanding through language. Indeed, language use always reflects our social contexts; these contexts and our ongoing interactions spur the shift to one language or another. Thus, from a psychodyanmic perspective, language shifting can be a psychologically significant response that reveals not only personal emotional experience but the social contexts and interpersonal interactions of our language use. While bilingualism and the process of acculturation are both clear markers of cultural difference, the dynamics of language and culture are also relevant to the experience of monolingual (or unilingual) speakers and monolingual therapies. According to the hermeneutic perspective, language is the primary and fundamental medium through which culture, tradition and custom are transmitted. When culture is associated only with difference or minority groups, the role of language in the transmission of culture and meaning is overlooked. The point is that all speakers are cultural beings engaged in a process of language acquisition and implicit cultural understanding, regardless of ethnicity or linguistic ability. The impact of culture in the structuring of personal experience is thus inescapable and evident in our use of language. It is through language that the world around us is disclosed. This is a world of culture, tradition and custom, which is bound up and preserved implicitly in language. Cultural meanings and differences are inherent to every therapeutic dyad, and evident through language differentiation, the use of idioms, choice of vocabulary, the nature of voice and the idiosyncratic culture and language of our family histories. How the client or therapist uses language is a central part of the therapeutic process. Indeed, the question of how the client and therapist speak and communicate can signal transferential and countertransferential issues in as powerful a manner as shifts from one language to another. Language, on this view, reveals the unfolding personal, social and cultural contexts of the therapeutic dyad.
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Author Biography Roger Frie is Associate Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University, Affiliate Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Faculty and Supervisor, William Alanson White Institute, New York.
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