Neighbors: Some psychoanalytic reflections

Abstract

While playing an important role in psychic development and sustenance as well as in triggering or causing psychopathology, neighbors have attracted little attention from psychoanalysts. Freud's wry protest against the Biblical injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself and Volkan's psychopolitical studies of ethnic neighbors are exceptions in this regard.Taking them as a starting point but going much farther, this paper elucidates the complex relationships that exists between actual neighbors. It also sheds light on the "neighborly" aspects of the analyst-patient bond. Finally, it underscores the existence of unassimilated self-representations within each individual that can be viewed as neighbors to his or her core self and deserve benevolent acknowledgment and acceptance.