The article “A Psychoanalytic Look into the Effects of Childhood and Adolescent Migration in Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation” takes a psychoanalytic, philosophical and socio-linguistic approach to the understanding of the short and long-term socio-emotional effects of child and adolescent migrations. Through a close look into Eva Hoffman’s classic migrant memoir, I examine the subjective meanings of a mother tongue in relation to language learners’ acquisition and internalization of a second language. Migrants’ stages of culture shock and integration are discussed and contrasted with the methodical textual division presented in the memoir. I draw attention to the way in which migrants’ initial unsettlement, which derives from preliminary and subsequent stages of linguistic, social and cultural immersions, gives way to a sensed trauma and resulting defenses. My article suggests how with a good enough environment, emigrants’ experiences often lead to integrations, as well as psychic and social growth.

In “Placing Myself in the Picture: An Autobiographical Approach to the Phenomenology of Language, Identity, Trauma and Memory” this researcher juxtaposes philosophical and psychoanalytic theories of language with descriptions of experiences of migration, language learning and education. She studies the effects of having one’s language of identification undervalued by political tensions and examine the subjective meaning of reconstructing one’s identity following a language-related emotional crisis. Carra-Salsberg defines her own libidinal attachments to introjected tongues and discuss how my present state of being within uneven languages were carved by the memory of experiences as a child and an adolescent migrant. Similar to Jacques Derrida’s (1996) description of “disorders of identity”, she blends theory with recollections of lived occurrences to conceptualize the way in which the inscription of early traumatic occurrences within languages ground individuals’ life-long responses and attitudes towards their acquired tongues.

“Impressions and Transformations: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of Early Linguistic Disruptions, Emotional Trauma, and of Testimony through the Study of Oscar Hijuelos’ Thoughts without Cigarettes” takes an ontological approach to the landscape of a lived language. Through an in-depth study of Oscar Hijuelos’ memoir I examine how a primary language promotes the emergence of the speaking subject. I look into the manner in which individual and shared histories interact with speakers’ perceptions, ongoing relations and dialogical conceptions within a culture. Through the research of semiotic, language philosophy, and psychoanalytic theories I study the ways in which speakers’ social, cognitive and emotional worlds are made from the fluid worlds of others and examine language’s core implication with such relation.

“Aggression and the Telos of Learning: A Psychoanalytic Study of Significant Language Learning” focuses on descriptions provided in Richard Rodriguez’ Hunger of Memory, Alice Pitt’s “Language on Loan”, and Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons. This article analysis the psycho-emotional situation of significant language learning for both: child and adolescent monolingual migrants, and host-foreign language students. This work pays close attention to the manner in which acquiring a new language unveils learners’ affect and history of learning. It looks into language acquisition in relation to our human nature, universal needs and responses to host-foreign language learning. Drives and defenses behind the embodiment of a new language are discussed through questions of desire, identifications and need for individuation. Also central to this paper is the exploration of how significant learning, as a cognitive-emotional experience, is tied to differing forms of aggression.