Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
be understood as the product of a contrast between a narcissistic regime of
ontological security, based on fantasies of moral superiority legitimizing
privileged entitlement, and the actual experience of the everyday living
environment in a context of displacement. In this light, home is nothing
but a network of positional routines confirming the subject in his existing
libidinal configuration and self-representation. It is within this libidinally
sustaining social and cultural environment that the subject will find meaning.
The more a subject is rooted within this network of identitary and
positional routines confirming him/her as a narcissistic privileged subject,
the more the subject will feel uprooted and meaningless in a different environment.
It is therefore not by chance that it is those who came from
rural environments who have been most deeply hurt by their forced move,
and who most want to go home.
According to Freud, in a condition of illness, the human libido retires from
its external investments and concentrates on the self, thus regressing to a
stage of narcissism (Freud, 1934: 39). It thus follows that both the uprooted
rural subject and the deeply distressed subject can be seen as nostalgic
of a libidinal environment, which once constantly repositioned them in
their pre-existing libidinal equilibrium. In their eyes, home is the ideal
“before” of the process of subjective transformation engendered by the
change in the environment into which they have been displaced.
Throughout the interviews, it was found that most of the Serb IDPs tried
to heal themselves by restoring a feeling of permanence and continuity in
many different ways. Some found relief by sharing their memories with
fellow IDPs: teachers might read or write away their troubles; mothers
would take care of their children; fathers would help their sons/parents
concentrate on the thought that not everything has been disrupted and that
the children are safe (i.e.: trying to hold on to a sense of continuity in the
future). However, the actual living conditions and the broader context of
poverty and increasing social and political fragmentation that most Serb
IDPs had to confront once displaced into Serbia, were not offering many
concrete chances for this continuity to be more than a desired state. In fact,
most of the displaced had to endure conditions of extreme economic and
material hardship and uncertainty for themselves, their relatives and their
children, with little likelihood of improvement in their living conditions in
the near future. Having said this, from the analysis of Serb IDP interviews,
it was very easy to see how even the temporary restoration of practices and
activities such as playing cards, helping children with the homework or
talking with neighbours, which used to be embedded within the predisplacement
every-day-life routines, was important and helpful in reproducing
and offering a predictable horizon of daily experiences and
expectations. In particular, these activities and dynamics were very im-
110