Esteban’s Story I was born into an upper middle-class family of European (French and Spanish) origin in Cuba in 1947, during the years prior to Castro’s communist revolution of 1959. At the time of my birth, and throughout my childhood, my father was an engineer/administrator, who was the director of a large corporation. My mother was an educator/homemaker, who dedicated herself primarily to raising her children and running our household. My sister—who was 3 years my senior—and I lived in an atmosphere of emotional and financial comfort and stability. In addition, we were the recipients of a sense of psychological security, which was conscientiously bestowed on us by our parents and which simultaneously resulted from our organized style of life. I experienced my family of origin as a loving, peaceful, nurturing, and well-structured system. My parents enjoyed a long, happy, and stable marriage. They formed a successful team and equally distributed their parenting responsibilities so that both parents provided quality time to my sister and me. As a result of my parents’ socioeconomic position, my earliest identity was formed against the backdrop of Cuba’s upper stratum. This was at once a gift and a tragedy, given the devastating, politically imposed, all encompassing losses that followed Castro’s communist revolution of 1959. The gift was receiving a refined and somewhat privileged reception into human life. The tragedy was that such graciousness did not prepare me for the poverty, emotional devastation, and personal and relational losses I would begin to experience in my early adolescence after the initiation of my forced expatriation. I, along with more than 14,000 other children, experienced forced expatriation from Cuba in 1962, when I was 14 years old—as an unaccompanied child. My parents sent me into political exile in the United States, through the then clandestine Operation Peter Pan, which was organized and funded by the Catholic Welfare Bureau and led by Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh. This operation facilitated the largest recorded political exodus of children in the Western hemisphere. After arriving in the United States, I was sent to a refugee camp for adolescent Cuban boys, which was located south of the Miami area. We lived in Spartan, barracks-type accommodations, which constituted a marked change from the physical comforts and emotional security to which I had been accustomed in Cuba. During the 3 months I spent in camp, I cried every day under the same pine tree for hours at a time, mourning the loss of part of myself—my family, my comfort, and my existential/phenomenological security. Subsequently, I received an academic merit scholarship to continue my secondary education in a Catholic high school in Delaware. During the next 2 years, I resided in a group home for boys, which was administered by a Catholic priest, who was also on the faculty of the high school I attended. Thereafter, I was, once again, relocated to a third destination—an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska, where I completed my final year of high school in 1967. I reunited with my parents in Omaha at approximately the time I completed high school. My sister, Anna, was not able to seek political exile because, by the time my parents were able to obtain exit visas in 1967, she had married and had given birth to her first child. Her husband was of military age and would not be allowed to exit Cuba for at least a decade. The reunion with my parents—after 5 years of separation—was bittersweet. I was angry and disappointed that Castro’s government did not allow my sister, with whom I had been quite close, to leave the island. Furthermore, notwithstanding my intense joy at being reunited with my parents in exile, I had to contend with the realization that things would not be the same as they had been in Cuba. For example, my family would never again be complete, and the privileged socioeconomic conditions that my parents had provided for me in Cuba were gone forever. Thus, I found my parents’ vulnerability to the harsh conditions of forced expatriation to be quite devastating. It was excruciatingly painful to see that my father—once the powerful and highly respected administrator of a leading international corporation in Cuba—had to accept an insignificant factory position that had nothing to do with his engineering background or administrative expertise to help the family survive financially. My mother, who herself had been a distinguished educator in Cuba, also had no alternative but to accept factory work, which held no relevance to her profession and personal meaning in reference to her life goals. These profound, transcending wounds have left a long-lasting mark on my sense of self and my developing identity. I perceived my forced expatriation as a highly traumatic phenomenon, which not only represented a series of profound sociopolitical, economic, and cultural losses, but also entailed a long separation from my parents at a very sensitive age and a permanent separation from my sister, which culminated in her premature death at the age of 44 years, the result of an “automobile accident” in Cuba in 1988. As such, these critical elements have constituted the loss of my phenomenological framework and original sociocultural context and have come to represent losses of a transcending and irretrievable nature in my life. For example, gone was the psychological security of having an extended family and a support network. Furthermore, our family system was drastically reduced from a comprehensive constellation, which included grandparents and younger generation aunts, uncles, and cousins, to a nuclear family unit, which was comprised solely by my parents and myself. My current values are a blend of my mother’s and my father’s beliefs, life philosophies, and manners of being-in-the-world, and they reflect an unresolved polarity between realistic industriousness and the romantic delusion that one is still a member of the upper class while living in the conditions of near poverty, a state which hundreds of thousands of political exiles encountered upon arrival in the United States. My values also constitute the essence of my “received” identity and of the identity I have actively chosen to incorporate into my sense of self, as a conscious, reflective adult. For example, although given my present status as a full-time graduate student, my income is somewhat limited, but my values, aspirations, social training, and philosophy of life have nothing to do with this temporary category and continue to correspond to the upper socioeconomic grooming I received as a child. Furthermore, the humanistic values, which I received from both of my parents, I believe, characterize most accurately my consciously chosen manner of being-in-the-world. This is reflected in my chosen profession, as a “wounded healer,” in the field of psychology and in my professional dedication—spanning the past 20 years—to providing culturally sensitive services to the most discriminated against minority populations. I was brought up as a member of the Caucasian race—both biologically and socioculturally. This has been instrumental in maintaining an intact sense of racial identity in my subsequent experiences as a political exile in a country such as the United States where ethnicity is often absurdly confounded with race and where even the most explicit and obvious Caucasian individuals of Latin American extraction (mostly of the younger generation) are effectively brainwashed into thinking that they, indeed, are not Caucasian because they were born in a Spanish-speaking country. Such individuals have had to contend with ethnic discrimination, notwithstanding that they indeed are members of the Caucasian race, given the issue that they are not per se “classic” representatives of what has been denominated as “culturally White” by a collective of powerful and influential—but highly ignorant and uncultivated individuals—who have succeeded in establishing the “rules and regulations” for what is, and what is not, “socioculturally White.” These individuals have, moreover, established that Whiteness is a “registered trademark” and a monopoly of exclusively one group of Caucasians in the world—namely, the U.S. Anglo Saxons. In view of these anthropologically absurd antics, which, unfortunately, are widespread, I am quite proud of having arrived in this country as an individual with an already well-developed sense of self, including the dimensions of racial and ethnic identity. I am, furthermore, proud that, notwithstanding the social and academic ignorance of mainstream society, I have remained impervious to the indoctrination of the latter and have not succumbed to the betrayal of my identity as a member of the Caucasian race—for the sake of the so-called ease of not having to swim against the preposterous and absurd current of “mainstream” society’s collective and all-encompassing ignorance. In terms of ethnic or national identity, along with tens of thousands of youngsters, I was deprived of growing up on my own soil and within the emotional security of my own cultural infrastructure. Instead, my cohorts and I have grown up as foreigners in the United States, and notwithstanding our legal status as permanent residents or American citizens, we shall remain as ontological foreigners for the rest of our lives—our cultural identities split forever between two irreconcilable nations. Along with more than one million individuals, my family experienced the total confiscation of our businesses, real estate, private property, bank accounts, and other assets by Castro’s government. Shortly after the revolution, we were exposed to diverse forms of political oppression, such as the abolishment of the freedoms of speech and press, the abolition of governmental elections, the Marxist-Leninist indoctrination of children at school, the persecution of the clergy, and the eradication of free enterprise. As political dissidents, we were permitted to exit Cuba with only a few personal belongings and very limited funds (i.e., 5 dollars per person). Experiencing these devastating events during early adolescence, followed by my attempts to consolidate my original national identity with my newly acquired status as a political expatriate living in a foreign country, resulted in profound existential turmoil and a state of cultural uprootedness. Thus, through the phenomenon of forced expatriation, I, along with hundreds of thousands of exiled Cubans, experienced a resulting, all-encompassing feeling-state of phenomenological uprootedness—that is, a lack of cultural, historical, and national continuity and stability. Many of us who were exiled at an early age may regard ourselves as the lost generation of the late 20th century—a collective of individuals whose lives were developmentally and phenomenologically quartered by the devastating socioeconomic, political, and cultural effects of the communist revolution and the ensuing chaos of political exile. From a metaphorical perspective, many Cuban expatriates of our generation conceive of ourselves as sociocultural-psychological abortions. This is a state of being that emerges as the result of having lost our original framework to exist (i.e., the conditions of our lives in Cuba, before the communist revolution), as a consequence of not fitting in, either into what Cuba has become under communist rule or, ontologically, into the phenomenological sphere of our adopted country of exile, and as a consequence of having had our existential development interrupted. In my developmental process, this feeling of cultural displacement—of not having roots anywhere—gradually evolved into a perduring, multidimensional sense of existential alienation from postrevolutionary, communist Cuba and, simultaneously, to some degree, from my country-of-exile, the United States. It is this inescapable presence of alienation per se that comes to form an inextricable part of many Cuban exiles’ national identity and existential framework: the nauseating feeling of not belonging anywhere—a perpetual state of being in existential limbo persists even after four decades of political exile. I do not feel completely North American, and I do not feel Cuban in the manner in which Cuba exists geopolitically today. Along with many of my exiled cohorts, I remain inexorably Cuban in my identification with a unique society, with its own phenomenological configuration, which ceased to exist in 1959, following the communist takeover. It is important to distinguish here, between the experience of an immigrant and that of an expatriate. Cuban expatriates do not practice the mentality or philosophy of immigration, which lends itself to a more adaptive attitude on the part of the individual who, as an immigrant per se, is voluntarily seeking an alternative—and permanent—life in a new country. The early-wave Cuban expatriate who belonged to the island’s considerably large upper and middle classes would not have left Cuba seeking a better life in the United States because prior to the revolution there was no socioeconomic need for such action given the expatriate’s level of professional and fiduciary development. Along with my family and myself, the overwhelming majority of Cuban expatriates believed that our political exile would be short-lived and temporary and that we would return to Cuba after Castro’s demise. Forty-four years after our political exile, many Cuban expatriates still consider the possibility of returning to Cuba after the eradication of communism. For example, many of my peers and I consider it an ethical responsibility as well as a human right and privilege to return to Cuba after Castro’s demise and to participate in the long and comprehensive reconstruction process, which will be needed to restore Cuba to the functional first world nation it was prior to Castro’s invasion. The relevant point is that the majority of Cuban expatriates presently residing in political exile throughout the world would not have left their nation for socioeconomic, migratory reasons. Thus, as a first-wave Cuban expatriate, I consider myself to be in exile solely from Castro’s totalitarian government, from the ensuing abolition of the basic human rights that are upheld in a democratic system, and from the preclusion of free enterprise as it is recognized internationally, within a capitalistic infrastructure. As such, I am not in exile from the fatherland, in itself, and I shall continue to indefinitely await Cuba’s eventual recovery and restoration to democracy, a key and highly present issue in the execution of my daily existence. This may be the reason why my struggles with the English language were so severe. English was not spoken at home during my childhood and early adolescence. I had difficulties once I arrived into the United States. The acquisition of English has been a painful process and an instrumental component of my identity construction. I have an idiosyncratic speech pattern that embodies my struggles with losing my original and desirable psychosociocultural framework, the “temporarility” of my forced expatriation, and my resistance to the acquisition of (or the serious attempts to learn) Standard English phonemes as a strategy for not being assimilated by the dominant culture, to keep my Cuban identity intact. I know that people still struggle to understand my heavy accent. Notwithstanding the ravaging experiences connected with my loss of country and forced expatriation, and even after assuming the role of a political exile, my identity was constructed within the values, norms, and structure of an affluent, Cuban-European family. However, even upper stratum Cuban society was still considerably influenced by a phallocentric model of psychosocial development and functioned primarily from a patriarchal perspective. Therefore, gender identity formation and sexual orientation issues were clear: heterosexuality was, unquestionably, the only acceptable sexual orientation for both my sister and for me. Gender roles were clearly delineated for men and women, very much in a parallel manner to the upper class, 1950s society of the United States. In Cuba, as in the United States, a critically differentiating experience in female and male development is generated from the transcultural phenomenon that women are, for the most part, responsible for early child care. Therefore, the development of my masculine traits and my defined male personality took place in relation with and in connection to other individuals to a lesser degree than did my sister’s identity formation. As a result, my sister was less individuated than me, and I was more autonomous and self-oriented than her. For example, through the process of early identification with our mother, my sister developed a sense of self that was continuous with others as well as connected to the world. As a consequence of the fact that women are mostly mothered by women, as a female child, my sister developed within a self-in-relation context of relational capacities and needs, in which significant importance was placed on the mother–daughter connection as an empathic unit of ongoing mutual support and on the values of nurturing and caring for others, kindness and graciousness in human transactions, and self-development within a framework of respecting and supporting the simultaneous progress of others. Conversely, my own gender identity formation was more independent and autonomous and more centered on developing myself as an individual entity versus a being-in-relation-to-others. Decades later, it was the referred independent and autonomous attitude that, in part, contributed to my divorce from my second wife. I now remember that she would often make reference—quite accurately and specifically—to the marked contrast between the manner in which she perceived herself in our relationship (i.e., as a being-in-relationship) and the manner in which she perceived that I behaved in our relationship (i.e., with much less reciprocity and mutuality, focusing more on my personal development vs. our development as a team). In retrospect, I realize that this was a valuable lesson to learn. Furthermore, from a multigenerational perspective, males played a dominant role in both my paternal and maternal ancestors’ lives. These phallocentric gender and societal roles were consistently transmitted across the generations to my own family of origin, wherein males enjoyed more personal freedom, individual autonomy, and decision-making power than females and benefited from certain double standards of behavior. For example, at the age of 12 or 13 years, I had more privileges and personal autonomy than my sister, who was then 16 years old. Whereas I received the message that I was macho, varón, y masculino and therefore had the upper hand, she received a message of deference to the masculine sex—a message against which she fortunately successfully rebelled. Again, these previously held values of male dominance ultimately resulted in significant conflicts in my second marriage to a Cuban woman, whose feminist orientation toward gender equality considerably contributed to my progressive rejection of what I now realize is an unfair and quite primitive value system. As a result of many academic discussions with my second former spouse (who presently remains my closest friend and colleague), and of my own consistent reflections on the subject matter, I have adopted a more humanistic and egalitarian worldview and understanding of human relationships, and understand the critical importance of mutuality in all—not just in marital relationships. In addition, my phallocentric family context affected my first attempt at forming a nuclear family. My daughter, Mabel (from my first marriage), at 10 years old nervously asked me if I wanted or planned to have a son, as if I would not be satisfied with merely having a daughter. By the time Mabel confronted me with this issue, I had divorced my first wife and had remarried, and my value system had evolved to the point that I was able to reassure her that I was ecstatic to have her as an only child and that she would always be my treasured and beautiful offspring. Another pattern is that all first-born or only sons—including myself—have been consistently and invariably named after their fathers on both sides of the family. Having been given my father’s name was at once a great honor and a marked challenge. Given that my father was a highly educated, culturally refined, and sophisticated individual who was gifted in many areas of life, and that he was, simultaneously, a truly accomplished professional in the fields of engineering and technical administration, at times I felt awed by his presence and by the expectation to follow in his footsteps. For example, I was expected to become an engineer and completed 1.5 years of engineering courses. In addition, because both my sister and I inherited our gender-consistent parental names (i.e., Anna and Esteban), I was resolute not to name my daughter, Mabel, after her mother or anyone else in the family. I voted to choose a name that had no antecedents on either side of the families-of-origin, thereby presenting Mabel with the opportunity to develop and formulate her own essence as an individual, without preconceived family notions or expectations from prior personas. Again, although as a Cuban expatriate I am considered to represent an ethnic minority in the United States, I am aware that my simultaneous membership in the Caucasian race has also entitled me to certain privileges that minority groups of color have not been able to receive, including easier upward mobility and the absence of racial discrimination on an almost daily basis, which is part of other minorities’ phenomenological experience. I feel that I have also successfully maintained my identity as a Caucasian individual, despite daily exposure to the absurd stereotyping and social ignorance of mainstream Anglo-American society, which postulates that Anglo-Saxons are the sole ethnicity with rightful claim to authentic membership in the Caucasian race. This latter ability to maintain an intact identity as a member of the Caucasian race despite the endless brainwashing that takes place through all possible mediums of written and verbal communication in the United States at times feels comparable to swimming upstream against a force equitable to that of Niagara Falls and actually surviving; it is, indeed, a significant accomplishment. I feel that as an individual I have attained a certain degree of integrated biculturalism (i.e., the ability to be involved in both my culture-of-origin and the culture of my host society without having a blended identity), while maintaining an intact sense of identity as a Cuban expatriate. Having had the subjective experience of forced expatriation from my fatherland, Cuba; having had four decades of life in political exile to consciously analyze and reflect on my context as a Cuban national living in the United States, with all the profound levels of loss and reconstruction such a position in life entails; and, finally, having attained an effective level of integration of the two cultures in reference, I feel comfortable with the experience of encountering and understanding the unique processes of cultural transition and acculturation of other individuals in phenomenological transition. Finally, as a Caucasian, I have developed an effective working knowledge about racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, and since the time of my residence in Cuba—a time also marked by ethnic and racial diversity—I have actively and consciously worked on developing a nonracist, humanistically oriented, Caucasian identity. As previously stated, I was raised with humanistic, Christian values, which place emphasis on equality and justice for both genders and for individuals of all races, ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Moreover, my parents believed in social justice and equality and ran their household in a democratic and equalitarian manner. Thus, the principles of racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender equality have been of paramount importance in my upbringing and in the development of my sense of identity as a Caucasian of Cuban nationality. I have successfully become bilingual and bicultural, and I can function quite capably and efficiently in both the mainstream U.S. culture and in my culture-of-origin, which I consider to be at least as efficient and high functioning as U.S. mainstream culture. I have been able to incorporate many aspects of U.S. culture without forsaking my own ethnic identity and value system. In addition, I have emerged as a stronger, more sensitive, more insightful human being as a result of this process. However, at a deeper, existential level, it would be absurd to deny that there are still unresolved personal and identity issues, which are the natural consequences of the loss of my cultural framework; of the fact that Cuba has not, as yet, been liberated from communism; and of the reality that a democratic process has still not been restored to millions of individuals whose human rights continue to be violated by a totalitarian regime. Content Themes In this story, Esteban tells us about the profound effect his losses have had in his life. He describes the sorrow at his loss of country, family, upper middle-class comforts, and language, weaving in the themes of acculturation and ethnicity in his relationship with the American cultural milieu. Tragic Loss One of the first themes to emerge in the story of Esteban is the issue of loss. Esteban’s reaction to his parents’ decision to send him to the United States when he was 14 years old still feels raw, and he understands the experience of “psychological uprootedness” as the most traumatic event in his life. His sense of uprootedness is similar to the construct of cultural homelessness, the loss of cultural/ethnic group membership, including identification and emotional attachment (Hoersting & Jenkins, 2011; Vivero & Jenkins, 1999). He perceives himself as a “sociocultural-psychological abortion.” He recalls that during the first 3 months of residence in the United States, he “cried every day under the same pine tree.” Throughout the story, Esteban talks about losing his economic security, his immediate and extended family, his cultural infrastructure, and his cultural identity. Esteban describes his losses from the perspective of a child losing the security and comfort of the world that was known to him. The tragedy of the losses is even more evident in him because Esteban came to the United States as an orphan, uprooted from a known and secure world by a decision his own parents made in an effort to offer him a better opportunity in the United States. The loss is exacerbated by the notion of never being able to return to a “pre-Castro “Cuba. Language Loss The possibility of loss of the language of origin, and the difficulties with the acquisition of the new language, makes it one of the most salient themes for a first-generation immigrant. A second language is best acquired in the first few years of life. Children and early adolescents learn the fastest, and adults the slowest. After age 12 or 14 years, the acquisition of a new language is more difficult (Berger, 2014; Johnson-Powell & Yamamoto, 1997). Complete native speaking and writing command of two or more languages is difficult and quite rare. Generally, individuals with bilingual capabilities have to use translation processes as part of their encoding in the second language, and they need to invest attention in how they say things as well as in what they say, which may make them look detached, vague, anxious, and less real (Marcos, 1976; Marcos & Urcuyo, 1979). When children and adolescents learn English, they may end up having various degrees of proficiency in English and their language of origin. Some immigrants keep their maternal language intact, whereas others, for reasons other than the age at migration, do not. Esteban has kept his Spanish alive. There seems to be a clear relationship between acculturation and language. More acculturated individuals have better command of English and more losses of the language of origin; however, that relationship is not necessarily linear (Kuo & Roysircar, 2004; Torres & Rollock, 2004). As is evident in Esteban’s writing, his command of written English is highly sophisticated, while at the same time his oral command is not; we know his “idiosyncratic speech pattern” is still intact because people still “struggle to understand” his “heavy accent.” An interesting characteristic of Esteban’s writing style is the high level of cognitive and intellectual sophistication that makes it look almost cerebral and unemotional. This style can be understood as a coping mechanism he is exhibiting to deal with the traumatic events in his life. It could also be related to his strong accent in English. It is not unusual for an individual who comes from a highly educated family to have well-developed written English proficiency not matched by the level of oral proficiency (Torres & Rollock, 2004). Many educated immigrants possess a good command of the written English language. The sophistication of written English may also be a way of compensating for concerns about oral proficiency. An adult immigrant can be affected by the double language loss. Dual encoding in two contexts affects the acquisition and use of both languages. On the one hand, with lack of practice and an inability to encode new material in the native language after migration, the native language gradually becomes obsolete and stale. Immigrants who do not have the opportunity to use words and expressions of their maternal language may end up with holes in the language that comes from lack of practice. On the other hand, the acquisition of the second language by an adult lacks the depth and completeness of the language acquisition that takes place during early schooling. The first-generation immigrant ends up characteristically having a hybrid English, mixed with words in the language of origin, and a hybrid language of origin, mixed with English. For example, one of us, Sara, cannot articulate in English information first learned in Spanish in the first 30 years of her life, and it is common for her not to be able to articulate ideas in Spanish encoded in the last 20 years of living, learning, and teaching in the United States. If she is speaking to her mother in Spanish about something she learned originally in English in the United States, she has to use English words and has difficulty saying it in Spanish, whereas if she is speaking to her American friends in English about something encoded as a young child in Argentina, she sometimes sounds inarticulate or unintelligent. Language can be one of the most profound losses of an immigrant. Because immigrants are so worried about everything that needs to be learned in the process of assimilation into another culture, the loss can be inconspicuous: Immigrants might not be aware of the loss until they suddenly realize that they really miss the language. Someone like Esteban may miss speaking in Spanish, reading fiction in Spanish, listening to music in Spanish, and speaking Spanish with friends. Language loss is the equivalent of losing an important relationship. Language, Acculturation, and Ethnicity The relationship between language, acculturation, and ethnicity is complex and multidimensional. The age of migration and the level of education of the immigrant are not the only factors that influence the magnitude of the loss of the native language. There are other factors in play, such as the degree of ambivalence toward the immigration decision, the level of choice in the decision, the experience after entering U.S. cultural contexts, the degree to which the immigrant wishes to acculturate, and many others. This is clear when Esteban talks about his cultural heritage, his accent, and his ethnicity. Esteban talks about his continued struggles with the language, having never lost his accent. As is not uncommon with other Cuban expatriates who had to leave everything behind, he still sees himself as having a Cuban identity that he would have gladly maintained had it not been for tragic political events. There is then a psychological component in Esteban’s issues with his second language acquisition that is related to his experience with his involuntary migration and his acculturation process. This has affected both his acquisition of English and how he makes meaning out of his experience of migration. The wife of the professional husband, who reluctantly follows him to the United States from her native country and who would have preferred not to emigrate, might have a harder time learning English and adapting to the new environment than someone in similar circumstances who has her own motivations to emigrate in addition to accompanying her husband in his professional pursuits. This psychological component in language acquisition can be either conscious or unconscious; can affect the immigrant’s acquisition of, and relationship with, the second language; and relates to the process of adaptation to a new cultural milieu. Esteban tackles his issues with acculturation with a mixture of nostalgia, rage, and a sense of continued alienation. Esteban says that while growing up in the United States he felt without roots and still considers himself to be in exile. Later in his story, he explains that he has incorporated many aspects of U.S. culture “without forsaking” his own ethnic identity and value system. In terms of his ethnicity, Esteban considers himself White but explains that he has absurdly been viewed as a minority by the “ignorant” Anglo-American society, feeling at times like he is “swimming upstream against a force equitable to that of Niagara Falls and actually surviving.” Seemingly contradictory identity allegiances, opposing views within himself, and contrasting positions in terms of where he stands in relation to the host culture are not unusual ways of coping with the dislocation and the traumatic nature of Esteban’s immigration experience; they are connected to his loss of his original language and his acquisition of the new one and his identity as a Cuban, a White male, and a bicultural American. Immigration and Social Class Every immigrant’s story is in part also a story related to issues of social class. Often immigrants change their social class standing, sometimes quite dramatically. It can go either up or down, rarely staying the same (Breunlin, Schwartz, & Mac Kune-Karrer, 1997; Mirkin, 1998). Sometimes the change in social class status is related to a change in educational status, but not always. Esteban’s forced migration carried with it traumatic loss of upper-class comfort. What one defines as social class markers also varies according to habits and customs of the country of origin. The rise in social class can be as dramatic and challenging as its decline. For the poorest immigrant, the encounter with the American shopping experience, with its array of choices and the availability of credit that allows the illusion of material ownership, can be an overwhelming occurrence. The overwhelming difference between the austerity of the country of origin and the vastness, richness, abundance, and megasizes of the United States is a universally shocking experience for the immigrant. Immigrant families who are less financially successful in the United States than in their country of origin clearly experience stressors (Mirkin, 1998). For the immigrant from a middle-class or upper-middle-class background in a non-Western society, coming to the United States can mean a dramatic change downward. It is not uncommon for middle-class families in urban areas of Latin America, Africa, or Asia, for example, to have full-time live-in maids who perform all household duties, a chauffeur, a handyman, delivery people to bring goods to the household, and so on. In hierarchical non-Western societies where labor costs are less expensive, families do not have to be wealthy to have access to inexpensive household help. In the United States, with its more democratic and egalitarian traditions and its high cost of labor, this is not possible except for wealthy families. In Esteban’s case, his parents had to work in menial jobs in the United States after having lived a life that a successful managerial position afforded in the Cuba of the 1950s. It is not unusual for professionals or former managers to find that in the United States they cannot use their training. Esteban’s sister died never having been reunited with her parents and her brother in the United States. His way of living in existential limbo and not quite acculturating, his difficulties with the language, and his perception of himself in constant angst may be at least in part explained by his anguish related to the family’s loss of social class standing. How can he be happy if his family is not? How can he be happy if his family lost everything they had? With his sister still in Cuba, poor and without the chances ever to improve her social class standing, how can he forget that he is really a Cuban at heart from before the Castro dictatorship? In his view, were he to stop waiting for Castro to be deposed and for the longed-for old social-class standing to be restored, he would betray his roots and his own identity as a Cuban. Clinical Applications This section includes assessment questions related to the content themes of the story that might be useful to ask with first-generation immigrant clients. The interventions address the technique of language switching, and the countertransference section includes sadness, guilt, denial of the client’s culture, and a wish to prove that the clinician is above prejudice. Assessment With first-generation immigrant clients like Esteban, it is important to assess language losses, changes in social-class standing, and the clients’ view of themselves in terms of their ethnicity and their experiences with the American culture. Language Loss Is your writing and oral English proficiency the same or different? If you have an accent, how do you experience it? Do you recall experiences about how your accent affects other people? If you are bilingual, how do you experience yourself when speaking the two different languages? In what language do you dream, count, curse, talk to yourself, or fantasize? Shifts in Social Class What do you think about your current economic/social-class standing? Has the social class or economic status of your family of origin changed? Has it improved? Worsened? What are the challenges/benefits related to the change/lack of change in social class? Ethnicity and Acculturation Views What are some of your experiences with the American cultural milieu that have affected how you view yourself today? Does your view of your ethnicity coincide with the way Americans view your ethnicity? Techniques and Interventions Language Switching and Language Mixing Acculturated individuals with bilingual skills may function effectively in the professional world, for example, but the emotional connections to the early language may appear in surprising contexts. It is not unusual for a bilingual individual to dream, count, curse, or soothe an infant in the language of origin (Pérez-Foster, 1996). Language switching is not uncommon, and the experience of self while speaking each language can shift dramatically depending on the context (Marcos, 1976; Pérez-Foster, 1996). Because language is associated with cultural meanings, individuals may perceive themselves as two different persons according to the language that they speak (Marcos & Urcuyo, 1979). Sometimes bilingual clients may have the need to use the reservoir of emotional connections for early-encoded memories or to express current or old losses. One technique is to allow the clients to express in their language of origin the memory or the feeling state they are trying to convey, even if the counselor does not speak the language of the client (Fuertes, 2004; Pérez-Foster, 1996). If the feeling state associated with the memories can be elicited in the language of origin, it might be expressed more fully, more genuinely, and more cathartically, even if the counselors cannot access the meaning of what the client is saying. One possibility is to ask the client to speak first in the language of origin and then ask the client to translate the memories into English. The richness of the memories may emerge more clearly when elicited in the originally encoded language (Javier, 1996). This fosters explorations into how the clients experience themselves in each language (Clauss, 1998). Allowing clients to mix in words in their language of origin with their communications in English may make them feel freer to express themselves without having to censor the first word that comes to their minds. If clients can use words in their language of origin without fearing a negative reaction from the therapists, their expressions might appear more genuine, less rigid, and more natural. Countertransference Clients like Esteban may elicit in their counselors intense sadness for their history of childhood uprooting. In addition, counselors may be confused and ambivalent about Esteban’s cultural factors. In some respects, he is not like a stereotypical Latino male, and in other respects he may appear to be. He is highly educated and sophisticated. Most of the time, he does not consider himself an American and longs to return to Cuba. He expresses himself aggressively about the “ignorant” Americans who treat him like a “colored” minority. Counselors may feel defensively attacked and may wonder whether to, or how to, tackle the issues of Esteban’s identity. Some may wish impatiently for him to give up his allegiance to Cuba, and others may prefer to avoid dealing with the complicated aspects of his identity. Sadness or Guilt For clients with an immigration story such as Esteban’s, with their stories of early parental loss, refugee status, and struggles at an early age, sadness or guilt about the circumstance of the client’s life may not be an unusual reaction (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991). If unaware, the counselor could engage in behaviors that may not be helpful. For example, the clinician might feel too much compassion to be helpful, minimizing issues for fear of being labeled ignorant or insensitive. The therapist might be tempted to extend session time, cross boundary lines, encourage dependency, or have an attitude that places responsibility on the clinician and uses an approach of “I am going to be the person who makes all the wrongs go away” (Gorkin, 1996). Denial of Culture Because of the complexity of cultural identity issues like the ones Esteban presents in his story, counselors may deny the existence of the cultural factors in the clients and treat them with the attitude that all people are more alike than different (Gorkin, 1996). If the counselor is of the same ethnic background as the client, the denial of the cultural issues in the client may be related to thinking that the similarities are so great that there is tacit understanding of what is going on without having to go into cultural issues. If the counselor is of a different ethnic background than that of the client, the identification may come from the supposed sharing of social class or level of education. It is not always easy to engage in conversations about culture, ethnicity, and the painful, sometimes accusatory experiences clients have with these issues. Because dealing with Esteban’s cultural factors may appear to be complicated, the counselor may avoid it, creating distance and possibly a cultural myopia (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991) that affect the therapeutic process. Wish to Prove That the Clinician Is Above Prejudice This is an interesting and often overlooked countertransference reaction that may seep into the therapeutic dyad and, when not acknowledged, may lead to disastrous outcomes (Gorkin, 1996). Often clients and counselors have differing family, political, religious, or sexual values. If a client evokes dislike or feelings of superiority in the counselor, the counselor may secretly feel discomfort for thinking that prejudices are coming to the surface. The concomitant push to bury those feelings and thoughts may stem from the intense need to prove that the counselor is without prejudice. Unacknowledged thoughts and feelings of this kind may result in pushing clients out of the therapeutic process or engaging in passive-aggressive behaviors or other unethical behaviors. These reactions may occur in counselors of the same or of different cultural backgrounds than the clients’. Toolbox Activity—Esteban