The Effect of the Mother Tongue and Cultural Differences of the Client and the Therapist on the Therapy Process

Organizer: Ozlem Kackin

In this panel, we will examine how and why “context” changes dramatically when therapy sessions in the mother tongue are compared to acquired language, even though the patient is talking about the same experience. This panel will present findings from psychoanalytic literature. It may justify our thinking that the patient’s memory may have many variants and this variants depending on the language in which they are conveyed.

With this study, we can focus on what are the processes that allow and do not allow (resistance) internal translation in a bilingual person.

*We can try to find out an answer to the question, ‘Is having more than one language a wealth or an exposure to inner conflict?’

* We can try to tease out the deep meanings of memory, repression, denial and how they are organized and layered in bilingual associative network.

Without making global generalization, we do suggest that clinicians working with bilingual patients should keep in mind the potential differences between the mother tongue and the acquired language. Because language is intri- cately tied to one’s culture and thus articulation of suffering is best understood by familairizing oneself with the dif- ferent aspects of the patient’s current and past culture. We think that this work is really significant, because people all over the world experience, try to make sense of self, suffer or struggle with identity problems such as migration, exile, belonging and nostalgia (be-longing or belonging) through language.

The Effect of The Mother Tongue And Cultural Differences Of The Client and the Therapist on The Therapy Process

Ozlem Kackin / Psychologist Psychoterapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey ozlemkackin@harran.edu.tr

Language and culture are fundamental factors that shape an individual’s identity and worldview. These factors are essential components in the development of the self and interpersonal relationships. Through their caregivers, chil- dren learn how to understand the world and relate to others, and these experiences are narrated and internalized through the individual’s mother tongue and culture. Language and culture are complex processes that involve verbal and non-verbal communication and enable individuals to make sense of their life experiences and to build relation- ships with others. Clients who cannot reach the psychotherapist’s office due to economic, physical or psychological barriers, who know their mother tongue in their geographical location, and who cannot reach a specialist who has a similar culture and competence in line with their needs, may apply to psychotherapists with different mother tongues and cultures. While this process allows the individual to adapt to his new environment and survive, on the other hand, it can cause the individual to feel a sense of losing their original self, culture and mother tongue. Similarly, in some cases, psychotherapists serve clients from different languages and cultures for various reasons. When the literature is examined, it has been reported that the effect of the mother tongue and culture of the therapist and client on the psychotherapy process should be taken into account. For this reason, the aim of this presentation is to raise aware- ness to the participants about the effect of the mother tongue and cultural differences of the client and therapist on the therapy process.

The Mother Tongue And its Relationship to Object Relational Context

Merve Nur Ozturk / Clinical Psychologist Psychoterapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey ozturkmervedanismanlik@gmail.com

According to the language used by the patient, the sense of self, self in relation to others, level of pathology varies between the mother tongue and the acquired language.

While the pathology is very obvious in the patient’s manner of telling in the mother tongue, the second language is positioned in a dimension that stays in cognition, does not touch emotions much more, and includes intellectual defenses or resistance. At this point, clinicians have assorted ideas in implementation. Some consider it appropriate to work with the mother tongue, others assume that a new self-construction can be done here, as they see the sec- ond language as a more virgin and uncontaminated area. Others think that it is better for the analyst to focus and analyze the language shears by leaving the client free in the analytical process. While it is discussed in the literature whether acquired language is a substitute superego, alter ego, something that bypasses the superego, supports our adaptation, or has a separation and avoidance function that protects the organism, this research can also offer its own views and findings.

Second language, uncontaminated by archaic conflicts (not in contact with pre-oedipal), providing new ways of feeling and thinking – although in the service of defenses and resistance – serves to escape from basic conflicts. Con- flicts around the mother tongue, including the relationship with the mother, can be examined in the context of object relations. This research may bring to mind the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, also mentioned by Amati Mehler. In order to escape the suffocating, ambivalent relationship with her mother, he not only leaves her mother tongue, but also migrates to France despite the war. After learning French, he realizes that he can write more freely. ( in a language that he can get rid of the invading mother) However, after the death of his mother, he translated the texts he wrote in French into his mother tongue. This research is important for us to understand how the individual activates the splitting and suppression function as a result of having more than one language, as in Beckett’s example.

Bilingualism in the Therapeutic Setting–A Review Of Existing Literature

Buket Saribiyik / Psychologist Psychoterapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey buketsrb00@gmail.com

While issues of bilingualism in psychoanalysis had been referred to prior to 1949 (e.g., Freud’s treatment of the Wolf man; Freud, 1918) in which he commented that a foreign language was used as a defense; or in his description of working with Dora [Freud, 1905] where his own shift into French has been described as a defensive move against the intensity of emotions that arose in describing the case], in the 1940s and 50s a dialogue began surrounding the meaning of the use of a second language in analysis. In Buxbaum’s view, a new language becomes the language of repression and creates a defensive system. She speculated that the primary language contains the keywords to repressed fantasies and memories. Since a second language may operate as a language of repression, it might offer distance from intense, painful, and unsymbolized events connected to early experiences.

Cultural Factors In Couples Therapy In Turkish Society

Ayse Gultekin / Clinical Psychologist Psychotherapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey aysekumas1982@gmail.com