Chicana feminist thinker, poet, and activist Gloria Anzaldúa coined the term mestiza consciousness to describe the state of awareness that emerges from the experiences of individuals inhabiting multiple intersecting identities, cultures, and worlds.

Anzaldúa’s notion of mestiza consciousness has exerted substantial influence across various theoretical frameworks and academic disciplines. Yet, it has received relatively little attention in psychoanalytic theory. Her work, I believe, can enrich our theory and practice tremendously.

In her groundbreaking work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Anzaldúa expands previous biologically based definitions of mestizaje and broadens the scope to include people who inhabit multiple worlds because of their gender, sexuality, color, class, body, personality, spiritual beliefs, and other life experiences.

I have been thinking about mestiza consciousness as a useful lens to understand and work with individuals whose subjective experience and expression transcend normative spaces and resist classification.

In Borderlands/La Frontera (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 194), she writes:

“To live in the Borderlands means
you are neither hispana india negra española
ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps
while carrying all five races on your back
not knowing which side to turn to, run from …”

The mestizo is, then, a subject that exists and asserts itself from within the cracks left by categorizations. These interstices represent painful yet potentially transformational spaces where opposites converge and conflict.

Anzaldúa positions herself as a borderland person. In Borderlands/La Frontera, she writes:

“The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working-class Anglo, Black, Asian—our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.”

—Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (p. 87). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.

What Does It Mean to Have a “Mestiza Consciousness”?

Mestiza consciousness is not merely relevant to those with mixed ethnic backgrounds; rather, it is a state of mind characterized by tolerance for contradictions and ambiguity, a nonbinary way of thinking and identifying ourselves with groups and social positions not limited to ethnic, racial, religious, class, gender, or national classifications.

What Anzaldúa calls the new tribalism -we define who we are by what we include and what we exclude (Anzaldúa & Keating, 2002). By shifting the focus from exclusion to inclusion, Anzaldúa invites us to reconfigure identity in open-ended, potentially transformative ways.

Having a mestiza consciousness involves being mindful of the intersecting or intermeshed nature of social identities such as gender, race, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, and others. It is aware of the tendency to romanticize origins and culture, and seeks to explore the ways in which we are simultaneously constituted as both oppressor and oppressed states of mind.

Clinical Resonances

Anzaldúa’s work has been instrumental in my clinical practice, especially with folx with non-normative gender identities and expressions. She reminds us eloquently that there is no pure version of gender uncontaminated by sociocultural forces. Generally, identification functions through exclusion: we define who and what we are by defining who and what we are not.

A mestiza sensibility helps us transcend binaries and think of gender not as a fixed noun but as a gerund—as a constant act of becoming, a process of reinterpretation. Or, as Patricia Gherovici put it so beautifully in Transgender Psychoanalysis:

“What matters is not having a body or being in a body but becoming the body that will embody being.”

The Dangers of Romantization

A mestiza sensibility remains vigilant about the tendency to romanticize liberatory processes. The shapeshifting of identities may interpellate others, stir up intense envy, lead to isolation, self-division, misunderstandings, and accusations of disloyalty. Sometimes the cost is death.

Looking Ahead

In the next series of posts, I will share how Anzaldúa’s concepts, in dialogue with psychoanalysis, can help us approach with less anxiety that which leaks, which cannot be contained, prescribed, or restricted -both in our minds and in the minds of others.

Have you read Alzandúa? If so, how have her contributions enriched your life or your practice? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

See you in the Borderlands.

References

• Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.

• Anzaldúa, G., & Keating, A. (2002). This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. New York, NY: Routledge.

• Gherovici, P. (2017). Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference. New York, NY: Routledge.

August 2015

Dear diary,

I can hardly believe it: it is my first week of work in the United States! I’ve been hired as a Social Worker in supportive housing. It feels like a dream!

I will be working with thirty eight “clients” (I’m still adjusting to that word), doing case management and supportive therapy. I am so excited!.

Some of my clients, many of them undocumented, only speak Spanish. I’m thrilled to meet them! I am the only bilingual person in my team, so I will have to translate for many, many people. How wonderful to be able to help this way! I am sure HR will recognize the value of that, and will bump my pay. With that extra money, I could start saving for psychoanalytic training.

Part of my job will be to do “home inspections” My supervisor mentioned they’ll train me in doing “home inspections” next week. I imagine it’s about helping with repairs or making sure people have what they need. What a great agency!

October 2015

Three months at the agency already… I asked HR about extra pay for speaking two languages, but they said no. They even made me feel greedy for suggesting it. … Maybe I am?

By the way, I’ve finally learned what “home inspections” really mean. Not repairs, not support. I have to enter clients’ apartments --even if they’re not home- check the smoke detector, and document whether the place is clean or dirty. If my progress notes are vague, I have to redo them. Otherwise, auditors may cut funding, jeopardizing the housing situation of hundreds of people.

Every detail matters: the dishes in the sink, the dust on the shelves, any signs of drug use, bottles of alcohol, or anything “concerning.” It feels intrusive. Punitive. Like surveillance disguised as care. Some colleagues don’t mind; some even seem entertained by peeking into the most intimate corners of other people’s homes. I don’t like this, and yet I’m told this is part of being a social worker.

I’m learning the art of documenting “just the right amount,” and for some reason it feels like I’m doing something wrong. When reviewing my notes, some people compliment me on my English. I find that quite confusing, honestly. I respond with what feels like offended gratitude, is that a thing?

July 2017

Dear diary,

Almost two years have passed. Busy doesn’t begin to describe it. Last week I handed in my resignation; by the end of the month I’ll be gone. I didn’t feel comfortable policing people and documenting whether they were “worthy” or not of keeping their space and having access to subsidized rent.

A new chapter awaits: psychoanalytic training, and a position at an outpatient clinic in New York.

When I told my social work colleagues, some colleagues seemed puzzled. One even remarked, “I thought you liked working with these clients, not with the worried well.” I scratched my head in confusion. In Uruguay, where I was born, raised and trained as a psychologist, psychoanalysis is practiced everywhere: public schools, prisons, shelters, psychiatric hospitals. I never thought of it as the domain of the “worried well” until I moved here.

It is so strange to sound “radical”, when discussing things that were so embedded in my daily experience, now considered “other”, “exotic”, “different”.

January 2018

Dear diary,

Six months into psychoanalytic training and I love it! I was nominated as candidates’ representative, what an honor to serve a bridge between classmates and the administration!

At our first board meeting, I was welcome with effusive warmth. Once the meeting started and it was my turn to speak, I brought a list of questions and concerns from students, along with some questions I had on my own. For example: why don’t candidates get paid for their work if Medicaid is paying the clinic?

Anticipating their response “lack of funding”, I referenced the holiday party we had last month, with a shrimp tower, oysters, a jazz band in tuxedos, all in a historic New York building. If they can afford that spectacle, why not pay the candidates who are funding their own education?

(“Let them eat cake”, I thought)

I was called “too passionate,” as if that were an insult. Was this a coded way of saying angry Latina? I don’t know. What I do know is that when I used the phrase “this is free labor”, colleagues stared at me with awe and mild horror, as though I had suddenly sprouted a Che Guevara beard and moustache (I was too young for a Karl Marx beard)

I am confused by their confusion. And I am afraid to keep speaking up. I don’t want to disappoint my colleagues, anger my teachers, or be cast as the “angry Latina.” . I think about my privilege: I am an immigrant, but I have a family-based green card. That means I can leave abusive workplaces or institutions without losing my status, without becoming immediately undocumented. Colleagues with employment-based green cards do not have that freedom; leaving their institutions could mean losing their legal status altogether. A risk too high to take.

March 2022

Dear diary,

Today I met with my supervisor. I brought up some questions on how to work with internalized racism. He shrugged, sighed, and said: “I don’t understand what’s all this thing about race… it’s just a matter of skin pigmentation.”

-“Excuse me?” I asked.
-“Yeah… what does it matter?” he replied.

-People are being murdered because of a “skin pigmentation issue”?

He sighed.

My heart raced. What do I do now? I am seeking help from the very person my nervous system is telling me to run away from.

I breathe. I tell myself I will be okay. I think: I should email the administration, raise this. Then I stop. No, I shouldn’t. I got a scholarship to train here. I should be grateful. How dare I complain. I knew what I was getting myself into.

April 2022

Dear diary,

I did it. I spoke to the administration. I asked for a different supervisor, explained why. How can I trust someone who reduces race to “skin pigmentation”?

Their first response was apparent shock, the administration replied: How is this possible? he’s been with us for decades. He’s a beloved faculty member! Are you sure he wasn’t just having a bad day? Or having a senior moment? Nobody has ever complained about him before.

… And in that instant, I understood why.

October 14, 2023

Dear diary,

There is a genocide in Gaza as we speak. Only a handful of colleagues have expressed themselves online. I am terrified to do it. I read their words, feel a bit less helpless. I enter the psychoanalytic listservs I am part of and I see people arguing whether psychoanalysis should stay out of politics. Freud himself died in exile… isn’t that political?

I feel I am going crazy. If so many people are having this argument, that must mean I am wrong. Maybe they were right, maybe there is such a thing as being too passionate.

Or maybe not? I remember this feeling… it is that inner state of shock in realizing that the person-institution your were trusting on, and at times depended on, has betrayed you and everything you stand for. Children of abusive parents know this very well.

Maybe I need to find other online communities…

December 20, 2023

Dear diary,

It’s the holiday break. I realize how much I love teaching. I am glad I can still use my social worker hat. So many of the issues my students bring are tied to systemic problems: patients losing insurance coverage, not being able to afford bus fare, lack of access to Wi-Fi, living in shelters and canceling sessions just to keep their bed.

We problem-solve together, with one foot in the concrete and the other in the intrapsychic. This week I was in awe of my students in Psychoanalytic Technique I. While discussing these challenges, they spontaneously created an mutual aid system- exchanging resources horizontally, without hierarchy.

By the end of class, we all left the Zoom room carrying a wealth of resources: woven into a web of shared knowledge that ranged from food pantries, literature, and film recommendations, analytic jokes, clinical vignettes, and conversations with both new and old theorists, how we cope with rage and stress, all in the service of enriching our lives and the lives of others.

December 31, 2023

Dear diary,

I can’t believe 2023 is almost done. By the way, the days of psychoanalytic parties with tuxedo-wearing jazz bands and fancy oyster and shrimp towers are apparently over.

Someone realized that the money spent on that single evening could have funded a full-time therapist for an entire year.

… But have they, though?

… No, most of my students are still not getting paid.

September 24, 2025

Dear diary,

It’s been exactly six months since I moved to Uruguay after 13 years in New York. A transition too long and complex to describe here.

My loved ones in the north tell me: “Eventually, when we have a better government, you will be able to come back.” We smile, we hope. But then comes the silence: when will we have a better government? And will a different government change something deeper, more systemic?

Today I received an email that made my day: an invitation to a panel at the Div. 39 spring meeting, Reclaiming Life from Institutions. I said yes immediately. I can’t wait to meet my fellow panelists and brainstorm together.

October 1, 2025

Dear diary,

I met with my fellow panelists via Zoom -colleagues from different backgrounds, different stages of their careers, different institutional affiliations. I felt deeply connected, even though we have never met before, and I am sitting in my unfurnished Montevidean apartment, after trying to reclaim my life from oppressive institutions, over five thousand miles away feeling connected in ways that not a single institution has ever made me feel.

Discussion

As I reacclimate to a country I left 13 years ago, I experience a strange juxtaposition: I am institutionally homeless, I dont currently teach for a particular institution, nor do I work for a clinic, and yet, it is in instances such as the one of preparing this talk that I feel connected, engaged and stimulated, even at a time where my body cannot be present.

Since I returned to Uruguay, I’ve found a network of people across the world, not only of therapists, but of artists, philosophers, writers, activists, etc. I want to suggest that it is in these interstitial spaces: rhizomatic, improvised, transnational - that we can begin to reclaim our lives from institutions.

Jennifer Freyd’s notion of institutional betrayal can provide psychoanalysts a helpful framework for understanding how, just as in the case of neglectful or an abusive family, psychoanalytic institutions can also enact harm through surveillance, exploitation, and censorship: the very structures that promise care and belonging.

Certain forms of betrayal are not incidental but systemic. Sandor Ferenczi’s work on trauma reminds us that traumatic shock often produces disavowal, resulting from the psyche’s desperate attempt to deny what it cannot bear. Institutions exploit this dynamic: they rely on our disavowal, our inability to fully name betrayal, to maintain their authority. Members of institutions find themselves caught in the same loop: compelled to belong, yet forced to defend against betrayal.

The use of a “diary format” aims to illustrate the function of testimonio. A category of literature that has its origins in Latin America. Testimonio serves as a vehicle through which marginalized subjects may “communicate, a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival”(Beverley, 1989: 12). in order to challenge the social and political norms. Sara Ahmed reminds us that complaint itself is a feminist method, a refusal to collude with institutional happiness scripts. My diary entries enact that refusal: they document the shock of betrayal and the usual psychic responses to it -naïve idealization, identification with the aggressor, denial, dissociation and betrayal blindness, etc.

My rage at injustice got me the label “too passionate,” but I know I am not alone. In the cracks left by institutions, I hear echoes of that passion. With other “unbearable” others, my voice becomes a symphony. And here I am, singing with all of you from 5,340 miles away. Borders cannot contain passion.

References

Ahmed, S. (2021). Complaint. Durham: Duke University Press.

Beverley, J. (1989). Testimonio: On the politics of truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ferenczi, S. (1932/1988). Confusión de lenguas entre los adultos y el niño. En Obras completas (Vol. IV). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism. New York: Knopf.

Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. Durham: Duke University Press.

Néstor Frenkel’s documentary Construcción de una ciudad (The Making of a City, 2007) tells the story of Federación, a city in Argentina that was completely demolished and relocated in the late 1970s, to make for the Salto Grande Dam, a massive hydroelectric complex on the Uruguay River.

The city was demolished and reconstructed in two years. The new Federación, only a few kilometers away from the old one, was formally inaugurated in 1979 by de facto President, military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla. The dictatorship framed the relocation as “progress,” but for the people who lost their homes, their plazas, and their memories, it was a forced displacement.

The film touches on a poignant subject, yet it is not devoid of Frenkel’s characteristic irony, wit and penchant for absurdity. I admire his ability to blend irony with tenderness, maintains a respectful distance from his interviewees and the audience.

Through interviews with Federación residents, Frenkel explores how the community coped with the loss of their traditions and familiar spaces, and how they tried to recreate part of what has been lost in a new city.

This intimate view, generously shared by the interviewees, touches themes that many therapists hear in sessions when helping patients navigate the pains of dislocation: loss, adaptation, the reconstruction of identity. Frenkel’s lens reminds us that memory is not only personal but collective, and that the act of remembering is itself a form of resistance.

After watching this wonderful documentary for a second time, I’ve compiled some lessons from the residents of Federación, who, through their stories, teach us about loss, rebirth, and community and the ways it unfolds in everyday life.

Lesson # 1 Belonging is relational

One recurrent theme in the interviews, is the impact of social isolation.

Once displaced, residents lamented living so much farther away from their loved neighbors and unable to find spaces for social gathering. “It felt like a ghost town”, residents claims.

As a way of coping with this transition, one resident started making homemade films as entertainment (which reminded me of the countless homemade films that were made during the pandemic, a time where social contact was also limited, for other reasons).

Another resident, shown in the picture below, is seen rebuilding his frontyard gazebo. And explains:

“Estamos tratando de hacer una glorieta igual a la que teníamos en casa, que era un lugar de reunión para nosotros. Buscando la enredadera que sea similar, para recrear la que tenían allá.”

“We are trying to build a gazebo like the one we had at home, which was a place of gathering for us. We are looking to grow a vine that is similar, to recreate the one we had there.”

When Frenkel asks him what the first thing he will do once it’s ready, he immediately describes a picture of social connection: drinking mate, eating asados, and sharing time together.

Do we belong to houses or to what makes a house a home?

For these residents, Home is not defined by architecture but by relationships, by the bonds that give meaning to place. Immigrants and refugees know this painfully well.

Lesson #2: Re-rooting takes time and effort

A Federación resident visits the area where his father had planted a series of trees states :

“Seeing the mutilated trees makes one feel the urge to recreate life. You have to turn to your own feelings and say: I’m going to start recreating what I had, what I used to see, and what I no longer see.”

Recreation, for this resident, becomes a form of resistance.

“I’ve done research on the ways each type of tree grows… Who could have taught me how to transplant a wild tree, knowing that, they are born naturally in a certain place and meant to remain there? … Not all trees accept being transplanted.” (my own translation)

“To transplant is a shock… but I am not giving up”.

(… At this point I am not sure whether he is talking about trees or about himself)

While discussing the tree that had the hardest time with the transition, the carob tree, a resident adds:

“It does not want to live there. It adapts, rejoices, grows for a while, and then gives itself up. As if it were saying: “No, this is not my place.”

Rerooting can be shocking for all living beings. Some people did the same, by actively refusing relocation, at the risk of drowning in the most literal sense. “I refused to open the door, I’d rather die in my home” said one resident.

Lesson #3: Displacement takes a toll on the body, not only the mind

Another recurrent theme in the interviews is the impact of displacement on physical health. One Federación resident shared that his mother became ill immediately after the move and had to be hospitalized. In tears, he adds: “She never got used to it.”

Others recalled experiencing aches, pains, and difficulties eating due to the stressors of the transition. “We were all so anxious and underweight,” one resident remembers.

Another resident laments how many elderly people died during the relocation. “We were too focused on having a new house, buying new furniture. We never had that. Then we realized that the elderly were used to another way of life…”

His words point to isolation and the shock of transition as the culprits.

Lesson #4: We should be suspicios of the “growth and progress” discourse

The reconstruction of Federación was marketed as progress and growth for the entire community. Yet, as the documentary shows, the rhetoric of “growth and progress” conceals displacement, rupture, and loss.

We see this pathology everywhere today: urban gentrification that uproots long-standing communities, fossil fuel expansion, “content farms” and countless other promises of “growth and progress”.

Edward Abbey captured this danger with stark clarity:

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

One resident’s testimony makes the cost of such progress painfully clear:

“When we opened the door to the new house, it felt like another planet. You had a house that, whether you liked it or not, you had to live in; there was no other choice. Everything was new, but not everything was beautiful. The house was new, but nobody wanted it.”

Growth without life-sustaining resources -without nature, without relationships- cannot be fertile ground for a new home, leaving people displaced in the very place they are told to belong.

Against this backdrop of authoritarian ‘progress,’ Frenkel crafts a narrative that resists closure. The way this resistance unfolds makes the documentary worth watching.

Lesson #5: Mourning takes many forms

Through the lives of the residents of Federación, we witness how communities cope with collective mourning: While some take a pragmatic stance on their relationship to loss and memory, others find through dreams and arts a way of recapturing a lost past that feels present.

This fragment of an exchange captures it vividly:

Resident:
- I still dream with the house, It feels as if I am still in my home, still cooking.

Partner:
- Why keep dreaming, if it’s no longer there?

Resident:
-I like to dream of my house, and to live in it. When I dream of it, it’s because I am living in it.

The simplicity yet profound essence of this statement is a classic Frenkel move.

For some, mourning means revisiting the past and using memory as a dwelling place. Others express the desire to return physically to the lost site, to find lost objects and places now buried. Others resist that pull, choosing not to revisit, as if protecting themselves from reopening the wound.

Lesson # 6 Art as a means for preserving collective memory and community

In one scene, Frenkel captures a theater play at a community center, based on the story of Federación. The actor recites before a teary-eyed audience:

“And will they pay me for the memories too?
For the children who grew up, will they pay me for them too?
For the loved ones who are gone, will they pay me for them too?
And the birds - where will they end up?
How crazy people are, to cover them in water.”

This melancholic monologue captures the impossibility of total compensation for loss, and the craziness of a human animal that goes against its own nature in the name of growth.

Another way in which art is featured as a vehicle for memory preservation is quite literal: a museum on-wheels that carries parts of the city’s history, showing us that collective memory won’t disappear, even when forced to deterritorialize.

This is not only a documentary about the past. It is a mirror held up to the present.

Federación went underwater during Argentina’s dictatorship, but communities worldwide are being displaced right now -by corporations, extractivist projects, war, genocide and the accelerating impacts of climate change. What was once justified as “development” is now repeated under the banners of “energy transition”, “liberation” or “economic growth.”

Frenkel does not connect the dots for us (and this is part of his winning formula), but the connection is clear:

Whether under authoritarian regimes or neoliberal corporations, communities are treated as expendable in the pursuit of power and profit.

Frenkel executes this project with the depth and irony characteristic of his work -tender moments of absurdity, long silences, no voice-offs, and almost no music- highlighting the rawness of the residents’ histories.

In short, Construcción de una ciudad is both a historical record and a meditation on displacement, memory, and the human capacity to adapt. It serves as a fractal, representing at a smaller scale, the broader patterns of global dispossession and the creative ways in which communities resist, reroot and rebuild.

Among the songs, “Todo Ray” immediately caught my attention, not only for its catchy melody but also for its title.

The title itself is a tribute to hybrid language: todo ray is the phonetic form of the Spanglish expression “todo right” (It’s all right). Beyond the lexical hybridity, which is already characteristic of the duo, irony is never absent: deep down, it’s not all good.

[Lyrics in English embedded in the clip]

I can’t help but think of this track as a dialogue between inner states, staging -both in the video and in the lyrics- the contrast between what is shown and what is felt.

The video begins with the singers on a cosmetic surgery stretcher, faces covered by a white towel, as if waking up from a facial procedure. The image evokes what Winnicott called the false self (the presentation of what one has learned is acceptable), which is represented in the lyrics as “the poker face”

“I know very well, but…”

At the same time, the lyrics embody what Žižek describes as fetishist disavowal: “I know very well that…, but…”.

This formula describes the internal process of recognizing the truth while simultaneously denying it. Žižek takes the concept from Freud and his theory of castration -“I know the mother doesn’t have a penis, but I act as if she did”- thus creating the formula: “I know very well that… but…”.

The chorus insists: “How badly I sleep, but everything right / I’m falling apart, but everything right.” The formula is repeated until it becomes almost a mantra: the public admission, so vulnerable, of being on the verge of internal collapse, followed by its denial.

The gesture is not only an admission of disavowal, it’s also a gesture of solidarity: the song addresses “the sad ones, the anxious, the jittery like me.” There’s an invitation to share fragility, and to notice that in the cracks left by fetishist disavowal, the body persists in telling its truth: sleep disturbances, bruxism, the impossibility of developing meaningful and authentic connections with others.

Phrases like “fingir demencia” (to feign dementia, erase memory), or “swimming in shit as comfortably as possible” expose the cost of disavowal. In other words: familiarity doesn’t make the shit less toxic.

Toward the end of the song, there’s a leap from the individual to the collective:

“From accident to accident, but I still don’t stop / All to keep living the American dream.”

Fetishistic disavowal operates not only at the individual level but also collectively: Our supposed “leaders” lie to us, rob us, kill us, dispossess us of our land, violate us, sell us solutions to problems they themselves created -but is everything all right?

The chorus insists that’s not the case, and the sooner we recognize it, the sooner we can think about how to begin repairing and coping with the outcome of what’s wrong

Even in the rawest moment, the voice asks: “Don’t you see me? I’m not okay.” A part of the subject recognizes that it’s not all good, even though the mask insists otherwise. I’m not okay doesn’t have to be an admission of defeat; perhaps it’s an invitation to take off the mask, even if at times it smells like shit.

CA7TRIEL and Paco Amoroso remind us that true repair begins when, both individually and collectively, we stop repeating everything right and dare to say: “no, it’s not all right”.

Entre las canciones, “Todo Ray” me atrapó de inmediato. El título es un homenaje al lenguaje híbrido: todo ray es la forma fonética de la expresión en spanglish todo right (“todo bien”). Además del hibridismo léxico, característico del dúo, aparece el elemento irónico: en el fondo, no está todo bien.

Este tema funciona como un diálogo entre estados internos, escenificando, tanto en el video como en la letra, el contraste entre lo que se muestra y lo que se siente.

El video comienza con los cantantes en una camilla de cirugía estética, rostros cubiertos por una toalla blanca, como si despertaran de un procedimiento facial. La imagen evoca lo que Winnicott llamaba el falso self, la máscara, el poker face que ellos mismos mencionan en la letra.

Al mismo tiempo, la canción encarna lo que Žižek describe como la desmentida fetichista: “sé muy bien que…, pero…”. Esta fórmula describe el proceso interno de reconocer la verdad y, a la vez, negarla. Žižek retoma el concepto de Freud y su teoría de la castración: “sé que la madre no tiene pene, pero actúo como si lo tuviera”. De allí surge la fórmula: “sé muy bien que…, pero…”.

En Todo Ray la lógica se repite: “Sé muy bien que… (soy alcohólico, duermo mal, me estoy fundiendo), pero todo ray”.

El estribillo insiste:

“Qué mal que duermo, pero todo right 
Me estoy fundiendo, pero todo right”. 

La repetición convierte la frase en un mantra: la admisión pública, vulnerable, de estar al borde del colapso interno, seguida inmediatamente de su negación.

El gesto no es sólo una admisión de esa desmentida, sino también un gesto solidario: la canción se dirige a “los tristes, los ansiosos, nerviositos como yo”. Hay una invitación a compartir la fragilidad y a observar que, en las grietas que deja la desmentida fetichista, el cuerpo persiste en decir su verdad: las perturbaciones del sueño, el bruxismo, la imposibilidad de conectarse con un otro desde el amor.

Frases como “fingir demencia” (borrar la memoria) o “nadar en la mierda lo más cómodo” exponen el costo de la desmentida. En otras palabras: Nadar cómodamente en lo familiar no lo vuelve menos mierda.

Sobre el final de la canción, hay un salto desde lo individual a lo colectivo:

 “De accidente en accidente, pero igual no paro 
 Todo por seguir viviendo el sueño americano”

La desmentida fetichista no solo opera a nivel individual, sino a nivel colectivo.

Nuestros líderes nos mienten, nos roban, nos matan, nos expropian de nuestra tierra, nos violan, nos venden soluciones a problemas que ellos mismos crearon… ¿pero todo ray?

CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso nos insisten en la importancia de reconocer las dos voces interiores: la que sabe que no está todo bien, y la que lo desmiente.

Incluso en el momento más crudo, la voz que deja de desmentir se pregunta: “¿No me ven? Voy mal”. Una parte del sujeto reconoce que no está todo bien, aunque la máscara insista en lo contrario.

Decir “voy mal” no tiene por qué ser una admisión de derrota; tal vez sea una invitación a sacarnos la máscara, aunque de a ratos huela a mierda. Pero para eso necesitamos a otros, necesitamos que nos vean, incluso cuando estamos mal.

CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso nos recuerdan que la verdadera reparación comienza cuando, tanto a nivel individual como colectivo, dejamos de repetir todo right cuando no corresponde y nos animamos a decir: no está tan chido.

Dolores Huerta, co‑founder of the United Farm Workers, recently revealed that César Chávez sexually assaulted her in the 1960s, resulting in two pregnancies. She explained that she stayed silent for six decades out of fear that speaking out would damage the farmworker movement she helped build. She kept this secret for nearly 60 years, believing that exposing Chávez would harm the farmworker movement and its legacy.

Rethinking the Questions We Ask Survivors

To my dismay, many comments from this news focused on why she didn’t report sooner. This same question has been asked of survivors of Epstein and countless others. But when our first instinct is to ask why the survivor didn’t act differently, we reinforce stigma and shame. We miss the deeper, systemic questions that actually illuminate the problem.

Here are some non‑stigmatizing, non‑shaming questions we could ask instead:

• Why did he feel entitled to abuse his power with impunity?

• What systems of power enabled his behavior?

• What safe alternatives did the survivor have besides silence?

• What are we collectively doing so wrong that survivors cannot trust they’ll be believed and met with compassion?

• Was the abuse dissociated from the survivor’s conscious experience?

• Did survival mean identifying with the aggressor, internalizing blame, and believing it was all her fault?

If our first question continues to focus on what the survivor should have done, then why would they trust us to hear their story with care?

What are some other non-stigmatizing questions we can ask ourselves and survivors?

I first encountered Proust in 2013, shortly after moving from Uruguay to New York for graduate studies in psychoanalysis. In the midst of adjusting to a new country, his novel became a kind of transitional object- a companion that helped me cope with the dislocations of migration.

This monumental novel, (7 volumes) which took me two years to read, accompanied me through the paradoxes of displacement. In that liminal state of being “neither here nor there,” “neither now nor then,” In Search of Lost Time served as an anchor.

Reading Proust was not always pleasurable: his sentences and occasional digressions can feel endless, but it was undeniably transformational. I will always thank myself for pushing past the intimidation and allowed myself to embark on this journey.

Here’s a graphic example of what I mean by “feeling endless”. The longest sentence of the novel is 958

Intimidating novel? Absolutely, but also: transformative, life-affirming, inspiring, and so many more adjectives that could make this sentence as long as Proust’s passages.

His exploration of memory resonated with my own experience of migration: the way past and present intertwine, how to remember is to create and how seemingly mundane objects and sensations have the potential to unlock hidden worlds.

Proust’s Theory of Memory

Both Proust and Freud were contemporaries, and although they approached memory from different vantage points, both developed theories about how memory functions, how we relate to ourselves and to others, and how our internal and external worlds evolve over time.

The Taste of a Madeleine

The madeleine scene is perhaps the most celebrated episode in Proust’s work. When the narrator dips a madeleine into tea, he states: “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.” He intuits that this sensation is connected to his past, yet conscious effort fails to locate it. As he reflects:

“It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.”

Only when he relinquishes conscious control does the involuntary memory unfold, The taste and smell of the tea-soaked crumbs release sensations that evoke the cakes his aunt once made for him as a child.

This relinquishing is crucial. It demonstrates how surrendering control allows a chain of associations to emerge. To me, this resonates with Freud’s fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, in which the patient is encouraged to speak freely, without censorship. As therapists and patients, we’ve all experienced how daunting this invitation can be, but how meaningful and rewarding it can be as well.

In both cases, relinquishing control opens the possibility for forgotten memories to surface. In this sense, both Freud and Proust invite us to embrace involuntary memory as a path to truth.

To me, Proust’s insistence on the superiority of involuntary memory reminds me of what Donald Winnicott says about the experience of play: the deepest truths of experience are not retrieved by force of will, but discovered in the spontaneous encounter with objects and the sensations they evoke. The condition of possibility for being affected by these involuntary memories exists under the same conditions necessary for play: it must not be challenged or interrupted.

An Invitation

So, Í want to pose a question to the reader, which is the same question that Proust posed to me implicitly after reading his novel:

What would it be like to simply allow -without challenge, interruption, or control- the flow of emotions and associations that arise when an object touches us deeply, in this involuntary way?

I am fully aware that this question/invitation, may not always seem safe, especially if the object that evokes it is imbued with traumatic elements. I believe therapy can be an optimal space in which we explore, in a safe and controlled setting, the ways in which our patients (and ourselves) are involuntary affected by the world around us.

Both Proust and Psychoanalysis give us tools to navigate the unpredictability of affect.

Thirteen years after I read Proust for the first time, I am about to embark on this journey once again. So, if you’d like to join me- Welcome aboard!

Una tarde, mientras caminaba por sus calles, redescubriendo lugares que se sentían a la vez familiares y extraños, me encontré pensando en un poema de uno de los poetas más queridos de Uruguay, Mario Benedetti (1920–2009), quien escribió con frecuencia sobre el exilio y el sentido de pertenencia. El poema se titula “Quiero creer que estoy volviendo”.

En medio de mi caminata, me agaché para atarme los cordones y, al levantar la vista, apareció un mural de Benedetti frente a mí.

Ese encuentro repentino me llevó de inmediato a uno de sus poemas:

“Regreso, quiero creer que estoy regresando / con mi peor y mi mejor historia / conozco de memoria este camino / pero igual me sorprendo…”

Este poema me hizo reflexionar no solo sobre mi propia experiencia de la migración de retorno, sino también sobre la de tantos otros -especialmente en los Estados Unidos- que enfrentan preguntas similares acerca de la pertenencia y el desplazamiento.

Quiero creer que estoy volviendo

Vuelvo, quiero creer que estoy volviendo
Con mi peor y mi mejor historia
Conozco este camino de memoria
Pero igual me sorprendo

El migrante que regresa quiere creer en una situación que a veces todavía se siente irreal, aunque el camino de vuelta a casa lo conozca de memoria. Lo que emerge es una experiencia paradójica: una combinación de familiaridad y sorpresa. El migrante que retorna se reconecta con aspectos conocidos mientras, al mismo tiempo, se enfrenta a los nuevos que se desarrollaron durante su vida en el país donde había residido anteriormente.

Hay tanto siempre que no llega nunca
Tanta osadía, tanta paz dispersa
Tanta luz que era sombra y viceversa
Y tanta vida trunca

Este verso describe la experiencia de una añoranza crónica tan familiar para los exiliados. La paz no se vive como un hilo continuo, sino como una experiencia fragmentada, no integrada. “La luz que fue sombra y viceversa” evoca la integración de partes escindidas: develando el interjuego entre lo que se abraza y lo que se oculta. Migrar y regresar despiertan esta vulnerabilidad particular: la confrontación con nuestro yo dividido, con partes de nosotros mismos que no siempre conviven armoniosamente.

Los psicoanalistas Vamik Volkan y Salman Akhtar han escrito extensamente sobre la experiencia migratoria y sobre cómo el proceso de migración transforma la relación con el tiempo. Volkan (1999), por ejemplo, ha desarrollado el concepto de nostalgia envenenada, en la cual el anhelo por el pasado se vuelve tóxico, atrapando al migrante en una patria idealizada que ya no existe. Si alguien regresa a su país en este estado mental, el choque entre las realidades internas y externas puede conducir a una ansiedad extrema y a una profunda desilusión. El papel del analista, en este caso, es ayudar al paciente a integrar esta nueva realidad, al mismo tiempo que simboliza e incorpora experiencias pasadas que habían permanecido previamente sin representación o habían sido desmentidas.

Vuelvo y pido perdón por la tardanza
Se debe a que hice muchos borradores
Me quedan dos o tres viejos rencores
Y sólo una confianza

Pedir perdón es reconocer la culpa, lo cual constituye una parte central de la experiencia migratoria y, cuando no se examina, puede tener un efecto corrosivo sobre la autoestima de la persona e inhibir su crecimiento y sus logros vitales. Los “rencores cargados” pueden cumplir otra función psíquica: sostener un vínculo en la mente del migrante, manteniendo vivas las conexiones con el pasado incluso cuando la presencia física era imposible. De este modo, la culpa y el resentimiento coexisten como formas paradójicas de apego: expresiones tanto de pérdida como de continuidad en el mundo interno del migrante.

Reparto mi experiencia a domicilio
Y cada abrazo es una recompensa
Pero me queda y no siento vergüenza
Nostalgia del exilio

Es la coexistencia de dos sentimientos aparentemente contradictorios: la calidez del abrazo de los seres queridos al regresar y la extraña nostalgia por lo que se ha dejado atrás. Por un instante, el migrante experimenta nostalgia por el mismo lugar al que acaba de volver. Esta paradoja revela la naturaleza estratificada del exilio: el anhelo nunca se resuelve del todo, sino que cambia de objeto. Lo que antes era nostalgia por la patria se convierte en nostalgia por la tierra extranjera y, al regresar, la nostalgia reaparece por la patria misma, ahora alterada y desconocida. Este cambio caleidoscópico puede generar momentos de desorientación en el migrante que retorna

Vuelvo y se distribuyen mi jornada
Las manos que recobro y las que dejo
Vuelvo a tener un rostro en el espejo
Y encuentro mi mirada

Regresar es volver a ser espejado por los seres queridos, aquellos que sostienen la memoria de nuestro pasado y nos la devuelven reflejada. En su presencia, redescubrimos un rostro en el espejo, una mirada que se siente a la vez familiar y renovada. Este reflejo no es solo visual, sino también cultural: el sentido del humor compartido, los códigos del lenguaje, los gestos y ritmos que pertenecen a una memoria colectiva. Es a través de estos testigos de nuestro pasado que los fragmentos de identidad se reensamblan, permitiendo al migrante sentir continuidad incluso dentro de la ruptura del exilio.

¿Qué ocurre cuando un migrante que retorna no puede encontrar su propia mirada en el reflejo de su madre-tierra? Esto me hizo pensar en el experimento del “rostro inmóvil” (Still Face), creado por el psicólogo del desarrollo Edward Tronick, que muestra cómo reaccionan los bebés cuando un cuidador retira de repente su capacidad de respuesta emocional: los bebés rápidamente se angustian, intentan reengancharse y, si son ignorados, muestran signos de desesperación.

¿Qué sucede cuando el migrante que retorna espera reconectarse con una tierra-madre emocionalmente no receptiva o inconsistente? ¿O cuando la tierra-madre intenta dar la bienvenida al migrante/bebé pero no logra reconocerlo plenamente?

Los momentos de desajuste y confusión son intrínsecos a la experiencia del retorno. Incluso cuando la tierra-madre parece reconocernos, nuestra mirada está inevitablemente filtrada por la ruptura de la separación. Intentar transmitir la vida vivida en el extranjero puede sentirse como una tarea abrumadora, a menudo acompañada de una sensación de soledad y desconexión, que en ocasiones puede reflejar la confusión de aquel bebé que no logra (al menos temporalmente) encontrarse en la mirada de su madre.

Tira y afloja entre lo que se añora
Y el fuego propio y la ceniza ajena
Y el entusiasmo pobre y la condena
Que no nos sirve ahora

Este fragmento captura la ambivalencia en el núcleo de la experiencia del retorno: la tensión entre creatividad y destrucción, separación y división. El migrante queda atrapado en un tira y afloja entre el anhelo y la desilusión, una lucha interna que los kleinianos pueden comprender y analizar en profundidad.

La frase “que ya no nos sirve” resuena con la idea de un mecanismo de defensa que deja de ser tan eficaz para el paciente como lo fue en el pasado, lo que lo impulsa a encontrar nuevas soluciones psíquicas. El pensamiento psicoanalítico, particularmente en relación con la posibilidad de ir más allá de patrones relacionales repetitivos, ilumina este movimiento hacia nuevas formas de integración.

Vuelvo de buen talante y buena gana
Se fueron las arrugas de mi ceño
Por fin puedo creer en lo que sueño
Estoy en mi ventana

Me encanta cómo este fragmento captura el elemento encarnado de este cambio: las arrugas pasadas de su frente hablan del paso del tiempo y de su huella en el cuerpo; la piel marcada por el ceño fruncido, por la vigilancia de ojos abiertos ante el miedo, por la ira o por la sorpresa. Son las marcas del exilio, de los años vividos en tensión. Decir que han desaparecido sugiere una liberación, un ablandamiento, un regreso a una mirada más abierta.

Creer en un sueño señala un desplazamiento: lo que antes parecía imposible comienza a tomar forma como realidad, una realidad imaginada que aún no existe. Quizás el propio acto de escribir de Benedetti sea una manera de imaginar esa realidad, de ensayarla primero en su mente y a través de la escritura, creando un espacio transicional, como diría Winnicott, en el que las realidades internas y externas se encuentran.

Nosotros mantuvimos nuestras voces
Ustedes van curando sus heridas
Empiezo a comprender las bienvenidas
Mejor que los adioses

Las bienvenidas “tienen sentido”: significan reconexión, sostén y la posibilidad de continuidad. Permiten al migrante sentirse nuevamente abrazado, reingresar a una red de pertenencia y de lazos sociales. Las despedidas, en cambio, resisten la elaboración y la simbolización cuando la posibilidad de la pérdida resulta insoportable. Son rupturas, a menudo vividas como arbitrarias o violentas, especialmente cuando el exilio mismo fue provocado por la persecución política o la agitación social, como en el caso de Benedetti (y en mi caso, y en el de muchos pacientes con los que trabajo).

Para muchos migrantes que regresan después de haber soportado una expulsión forzada, la despedida es en sí misma un privilegio. Para los inmigrantes indocumentados, la idea de una cálida “bienvenida” puede sentirse como una utopía lejana.

Vuelvo con la esperanza abrumadora
Y los fantasmas que llevé conmigo
Y el arrabal de todos y el amigo
Que estaba y no está ahora

Benedetti parece plenamente consciente de lo que lleva en su equipaje: el barrio, la fuerza de la comunidad y el significado de la familia (elementos que pueden variar profundamente entre culturas). Sus palabras nos recuerdan que el retorno nunca es solo acerca del individuo; también involucra los espacios colectivos y las relaciones que configuran nuestra identidad. El migrante no regresa solo, sino que trae consigo los ecos de la comunidad, la memoria de las calles compartidas y la ausencia de quienes ya no están.

Los que volvemos, estamos fragmentados pero enteros, como una pieza de Kintsugi

El verso de Benedetti captura esta paradoja: el migrante regresa fragmentado, pero también con un renovado sentido de su experiencia subjetiva. La experiencia del exilio deja cicatrices, y sin embargo esas cicatrices pueden convertirse en lugares de sabiduría y autoafirmación y emergencia de nuevos modos de ser en el mundo.

Vuelvo sin duelo, y ha llovido tanto
En mi ausencia, en mis calles, en mi mundo
Que me pierdo en los nombres y confundo
La lluvia con el llanto

Benedetti sugiere que la ausencia borra los detalles, que el migrante olvida lo que alguna vez fue familiar. Al regresar, se encuentra extraño en lugares que deberían sentirse como hogar.

Ese confundir la lluvia con lágrimas, para mí, captura esa desorientación. Puede entenderse como una proyección de su tristeza en el paisaje, utilizando el entorno como un contenedor para experimentar el inquietante extrañamiento de descubrir lo familiar alterado.

Al hablar del proceso de duelo, Ernst Ticho (1966) describe lo que llama un proceso de “reconfiguración”, en el cual la personalidad se reorganiza y se produce una “reintegración” del mundo interno sobre la base de la interacción con el nuevo entorno.

Benedetti parece haber atravesado cierto grado de reconfiguración: al cargar “tanto las peores como las mejores historias” logra un sentido multidimensional del yo, que sostiene su capacidad de contener la contradicción sin que ello desemboque en un colapso psíquico.

Este es uno de los principales desafíos de quienes hemos regresado a nuestros países, ya sea por elección o por circunstancia: no recurrir a la escisión para negar el dolor de la pérdida y del desajuste, sino cargar con nuestros múltiples yoes sin sentir que debemos amputar partes de nosotros mismos para encajar, para ser vistos, respetados y abrazados en nuestra complejidad.

Creo que el psicoanálisis está particularmente equipado para dar testimonio de este proceso liminal de alguien que “quiere creer que está regresando”. Los psicoanalistas comprenden que allí donde hay un querer hacer algo, también existe una fuerza en dirección opuesta. El analista ayuda al paciente a sostener este estado suspendido entre creer y no creer, entre querer y no querer.

No existe tal cosa como regresar: ya no somos las mismas personas que éramos antes de migrar, y tampoco lo es nuestro país. El retorno no es un acercamiento, sino una confrontación con la diferencia. Al atravesar la ilusión de fusión con un otro externo, y al abrazar la diferencia sin temor a ser absorbidos, nos volvemos más capaces de creer que existe un hogar al que siempre podemos regresar: nosotros mismos.

One afternoon, while walking through its streets, rediscovering places that felt both familiar and foreign, I found myself thinking of a poem by one of Uruguay’s most beloved poets, Mario Benedetti. (1920–2009), who wrote often about exile and belonging. The poem is entitled “Quiero creer que estoy volviendo” (I want to believe I am returning).

In the midst of my walk, an uncanny moment found me. I bent down to tie my shoelaces, and when I looked up, a mural appeared before me. That sudden encounter carried me instantly back to Benedetti’s poem.

“I return, I want to believe I am returning / with my worst and my best story / I know this road by heart / but still I am surprised…”

This poem made me reflect not only on my own experience of return migration, but also on that of many others -respecially in the United States- who face similar questions of belonging and displacement.

Montevideo, photo taken by me. March 2025.

DISCLAIMER: The fragments I will discuss below come from a poem originally written in Spanish. Since I couldn’t find any official English translations, I leaned on my Uruguayan roots and my ESL teaching background to craft my own version. My hope is to open this beautiful piece to other returning migrants who don’t speak Spanish, so they too can feel the beauty and the ache of Benedetti’s words.

I Return, I Want to Believe I Am Returning (Selected Fragments)

I return, I want to believe I am returning
with my worst and my best story
I know this road by heart
but still I am surprised

The returning migrant wants to believe in a situation that at times still feels unreal, even though the road back home is known by heart. What emerges is a paradoxical experience: a combination of familiarity and surprise. The returning migrant reconnects with familiar aspects while simultaneously confronting the new ones that developed during their life in their former country.

There is always so much that never arrives
 so much daring, so much scattered peace
 so much light that was shadow and vice versa
 and so much life cut short

This verse describes the experience of chronic longing so familiar to exiles. Peace is not lived as a continuous thread but as a fragmented, unintegrated experience. “The light that was shadow and vice versa” evokes the integration of split parts: the interplay between what is embraced and what is hidden. Migrating and returning stir up this particular vulnerability: the confrontation with divided aspects of the self and their uneasy coexistence.

Psychoanalysts Vamik Volkan and Salman Akthar have written extensively on the migrant experience, and how the migration process changes one’s relationship with time. Volkan (1999), for example, has written about poisoned nostalgia , where longing for the past becomes toxic, trapping the migrant in an idealized homeland that no longer exists. If someone returns to their country on this mental state, the clash of inner and outer realities may lead to extreme anxiety and profund disillusionment. The role of the analyst, in this case, is to help the patient integrate this new reality while integrating past experiences that had been previously unsymbolized or disavowed.

I return and ask forgiveness for the delay
 it’s because I made many drafts
 I still carry two or three old grudges
 and only one confidence

To ask for forgiveness is to acknowledge guilt, which is such a central part of the migrant experience, and, when left unexamined, it can have a corrosive effect on the person’s ense of self worth and can inhibit growth and life accomplishments. The “grudges carried” may serve another psychic function: they can sustain a connection in the migrant’s mind, keeping alive ties to the past even when physical presence was impossible. In this way, guilt and resentment coexist as paradoxical forms of attachment: expressions of both loss and continuity in the migrant’s inner world.

I deliver my experience door to door
 and every embrace is a reward
 but I still feel -and I say this without shame-
 nostalgia for exile

It is the coexistence of two seemingly contradictory feelings: the warmth of the embrace of loved ones upon returning, and the strange nostalgia for what has been left behind. For a moment, the migrant experiences nostalgia for the very place to which they have just returned. This paradox reveals the multilayered nature of exile: longing is never fully resolved, but shifts its object. What was once nostalgia for the homeland becomes nostalgia for the foreign land, and upon return, nostalgia reappears for the homeland itself, now altered and unfamiliar. This caleidoscopic shift can create moments of disorientation in the returning migrant.

I return and my day is distributed
 among the hands I recover and those I leave
 I return to have a face in the mirror
 and I find my gaze

To return is to be mirrored again by loved ones - those who hold the memory of our past and reflect it back to us. In their presence, we rediscover a face in the mirror, a gaze that feels both familiar and renewed. This mirroring is not only visual but cultural: the shared sense of humor, the codes of language, the gestures and rhythms that belong to a collective memory. It is through these witnesses of our past that fragments of identity are reassembled, allowing the migrant to feel continuity even within the rupture of exile.

What happens when a returning migrant cannot find their own gaze in the reflection of their mother-land? This made me think of the “Still Face” experiment, created by developmental psychologist Edward Tronick, shows how infants react when a caregiver suddenly withdraws emotional responsiveness: babies quickly become distressed, attempt to re-engage, and if ignored, show signs of despair. What happens when the returning migrant hopes to reconnect to a mother-land that is emotionally unresponsive or inconsistent? Or when the mother-land that tries to welcome the returning-migrant/baby but cannot full recognize them?

Moments of misattunement and confusion are intrinsic to the experience of return. Even when the motherland seems to recognize us, our gaze is inevitably filtered through the rupture of separation. Attempting to convey the life lived abroad can feel like an overwhelming task, often accompanied by a sense of solitude and disconnection, which at times can mirror the confusion of that infant who cannot (at least temporarily) find themselves in their mother’s gaze.

A tug-of-war between what is longed for
 and my own fire and another’s ashes
 between poor enthusiasm and condemnation
 that no longer serves us

This fragment captures the ambivalence at the heart of return: the tension between creativity and destruction, separation and division. The migrant is caught in a tug-of-war between longing and disillusionment, an inner struggle that Kleinians may understand with more nuance.

The phrase “that no longer serves us” resonates with the idea of a defense mechanism no longer being as effective to the patient as it used to, prompting them to find new psychic solutions.

I return in good spirit and good will
the wrinkles of my brow are gone
at last I can believe in what I dream
I am at my window

I love how this captures the embodied element of this shift: The bygone wrinkles of his brow speak of time’s passage and its mark on the body: skin stretched by frowning, by the wide-eyed vigilance of fear, by anger, or by surprise. They are the marks of exile, of years lived in tension. To say they are gone is to suggest a release, a softening, a return to a more open gaze.

Believing in a dream signals a shift: what once felt impossible begins to take shape as reality, an imagined reality that does not yet exist. Perhaps Benedetti’s act of writing itself is a way of imagining this reality, rehearsing it first in his mind and via writing, creating a transitional space in which inner and outer realities meet.

We kept our voices
 you are healing your wounds
 I begin to understand the welcomes
 better than the farewells

Welcomes “make sense”: they signify reconnection, sustenance, and the possibility of continuity. They allow the migrant to feel embraced again, to re-enter a network of belonging and social bonds. Farewells, by contrast, resist elaboration and symbolization when the possibility of loss seems unbearable. They are ruptures, often experienced as arbitrary or violent, especially when exile itself was prompted by political persecution or social upheaval, as in Benedetti’s case (and in my case and the case of many patients I work with).

For many returning migrants who endured forced removal, a farewell is itself a privilege. For undocumented immigrants, the thought of a warm “welcome” may remain a distant dream.

I return with overwhelming hope
 and the ghosts I carried with me
 and the neighborhood of everyone and the friend
 who was and is no longer

Benedetti seems fully aware of what he carries in his luggage: the neighborhood, the power of community, and the meaning of family (elements that can vary profoundly across cultures). His words remind us that return is never only about the individual; it is also about the collective spaces and relationships that shape identity. The migrant does not come back alone but brings with them the echoes of community, the memory of shared streets, and the absence of those who are no longer there.

We are all broken but whole
 decimated by forgiveness and remnants
 a little more worn and more wise
 older and more sincere

Broken but whole, like a piece of Kintsugi: the ambivalence surfaces again.

Benedetti’s verse captures this paradox: the migrant returns carrying fractures, but also a renewed sense of wholeness. The experience of exile leaves scars, yet those scars can become sites of wisdom and self-affirmation.

I return without mourning, and it has rained so much
 in my absence, in my streets, in my world
 that I get lost in names and confuse
 the rain with weeping

Did the rain wash away the mourning? Benedetti suggests that absence erases details, that the migrant forgets what was once familiar. Upon returning, he finds himself a stranger to places that should feel like home.

This confusion, mistaking rain for tears, to me, captures this disorientation. It can be seen as a projection of his sadness into the landscape, using the environment as a container of experiencing the uncanny estrangement of finding the familiar altered.

When discussing the process of mourning, Ernst Ticho (1966) describes what he calls a process of “reshaping”, in which the personality is reorganized, and there is a “reintegration of the internal world on the basis of the interaction with the new environment”

Benedetti seems to have gone through some degree of reshaping, in carrying “both the worst and the best stories” he can have a multidimensional sense of self, which sustains his ability to hold contradiction without resulting in psychic collapse.

This is one of the main challenges of those of us who returned to their countries, either by choice or by circumstance: to not resort to splitting in order to deny the pain of loss and misattunement, to carry our multiple selves without feeling we need to cut parts of ourselves to fit in, to be seen, respected, and embraced in our complexity.

I think Psychoanalysis is uniquely equipped to bear witness to this liminal process of someone “wanting to believe they are returning”. Psychoanalysts understand that where there is wanting to do something, there is also a force in its opposite direction. The analyst helps the patient hold this suspended state between believing and non-believing, between wanting and not wanting.

There isn’t such a thing as returning: we are no longer the same people we were before migrating, and neither is our country. The return is not a rapprochement, but a confrontation with difference. By traversing the illusion of fusion with an external other, and by embracing difference without fear of engulfment, we become better equipped to believe that there is a home we can always return to: ourselves.

References

Akhtar, S. (1996). “Someday...” and “If only...” fantasies: Pathological optimism and inordinate nostalgia as related forms of idealization. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44(3), 723–753.

Grinberg, León & Grinberg, Rebeca (1996). Migración y exilio: estudio psicoanalítico. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.

Ticho, E. (1966). The mourning process in psychotherapy. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 47(3), 324–330

Volkan, V. D. (1999). Nostalgia as a linking phenomenon. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 1