THE SEARCH FOR HOME: A DIALECTIC OF ALIENATION AND BELONGING by DARREN JUDD BASSERABIE DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY in the FACULTY OF ARTS at the RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY Supervisors: HILTON RUDNICK and LIZBE VOS JANUARY 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express sincere gratitude to the following: My wife: Shelley You are my companion on our search together for home. With you I have found and continue to find home. Thank you for your superhuman support, love, and sense of humour. My parents: Arnold and Joceline You have pr<;>vided me with a vision to strive for of what home can be. So much of who I am lowe to you. Thank you for your love and support, gentle guidance and life. My children: Yishai and Ela' Thank you for the time you allowed me. You truly are the joy of home. My brother: Lance You are my brother and friend. My inlaws: David and Marcelle Thank you for giving me a space in which to complete this dissertation together with your support and encouragement. My supervisors: Hilton and Lizbe Thank you for helping me bring what seemed impossible into reality. Thank you for your encouragement and wise guidance and helping me know that I could do it. My teacher: Corinne Oosthuizen: You opened up this journey, but more than that, you opened my eyes. Robyn: I could never have done it without you - thank you. Participants of this study: Thank you for taking the time to add such richness to my search. Hashem (God): Thank you in everything that I do. I ABSTRACT The notion of home is one which stirs deeply within us. The search for home is guided by an almost ineffable sense of longing. It is search which we share as common, yet the longing is intensely personal and the constructions of our home unique. At the heart of this search are our experiences of alienation and belonging. The process of negotiating our sense of alienation and belonging, separation and togetherness is fundamental to the way in which we experience, construct our identities and make meaning. Our sense of home is inextricably related to our sense of identity. Our identities carry with them the markers that help us to resonate with a situation or feel alienated from it, to join with it or remain apart. At the same time our sense of alienation and belonging will playa role in the construction of our identities. This study explores the participants' experience of their search for home and their experiences of alienation and belonging that pave this journey. It suggests that there is a dialectical nature between alienation and belonging. This particular dialectic influences our meaning making and can be a frame through which we view our experiences. The dialectic shifts and shifts along with identity. Identity in turn operat~s to shift our experience of alienation and belonging. The study will explore how I ,see the theme of alienation and belonging operating in my own life and will create a context for the rest of the study. It will explore the relationship between epistemology and identity. It will make particular reference to then theme of the bounded monad that runs through modern epistemology. It will look at the potential for this to shift to one of greater connections as understanding of identity is seen within a postmodern epistemology. Epistemology and identity therefore form a broad context in which a sense of alienation and belonging is experienced. The study views alienation and belonging as a broad template of experience that can be used to frame experiences and negotiate a way through experiences of 'stuckness'. It does not seek to prove, but rather to open a domain of conversation with which the reader can explore her own experiences and perhaps find resonance. II TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements I Abstract II Table of Contents III Chapter 1 - Personal Prologue: Constructing the context 1 Chapter 2 - Epistemology: the emerging shadow 17 Scene - the face of the narrator 17 Scene - postmodem resonations in the author's experience 18 2.1. Modernism. No, wait, just before... 20 2.2. Ok, now... Modernism 22 2.2.1. Freedom from tradition 22 2.2:2. Essence and Truth 23 2.2.3. Knowable world 24 2.3. Postmodernism 25 2.3.1. Truth in perspective 26 2.3.2. Knowable world 27 2.3.3. Language 27 2.3.4. Implications for research 28 Chapter 3 - Literature review: Shades of the Split Self 31 3.1. Spotlight: Alienation 33 3.1.1. A word about alienation anyway 34 3.2. Identity & epistemology: The Contexts of Alienation and Belonging 36 3.2.1. Modernism. No, wait, just before... 37 3.2.2. Middle Ages - Self in the Dark 37 3.2.2.1. Reflecting the Dark 38 3.2.3. Romanticism - Love is in the ... soul 39 3.2.3.1. Deep Reflections 41 3.2.4. Ok, now... Modernism 41 3.2.4.1. Picture of the person 42 3.2.4.2. Let us begin at the '?' a very good place to start 42 3.2.4.3. Sociologist Perspectives - oh the times they are a' alienating 45 1. Marx 45 2. Durkheim 46 3. VVeber 46 3.2.4.4. The psychological monad. 47 III 1. Three faces of the Modern Self 48 2. Psychological Terrain 49 2.1. Depth psychology - psychoanalytic 49 2.2. Trait theory 51 2.3. Personal construct theory 52 2.4. Behaviourism 53 2.5. Existentialism 54 2.6. Humanism 55 3.2.4.4.5. Reflecting the rational 56 3.2.4.5. Essential thread of truth 57 Chapter 4 - Literature Review: If the self fits, wear is it 59 4.1. Shifting self as the culture is suffused with technology 62 4.2. Traces of History 67 4.2.1. Chalice and the Blade 67 4.2.2. Extended Family therapy connections 68 4.2.3. A Prophetic voice 69 4.2.4. French deconstructionists - ifthe self fits, wear is it? 71 4.2.5. Stepping out of monologue 74 4.3. Shifts of the tectonic plates 75 4.3.1 The quest: the one vs. many/none 75 4.3.2. Either/or - Both/and 76 4.3.3. Knowledge 76 4.3.4. Truth...s 77 4.3.5. Language - A word can paint a thousand pictures 77 4.3.6. Critical Reflexivity 78 4.4. Social Constructionism 78 4.4.1. The constructed web - social construction of identity 80 Chapter 5 - Research Methodology 83 5.1. Introduction 83 5.2. Research itself: an alienating or a connecting process 84 5.3. Social Constructionist Research 86 5.4. Contexts 88 5.4.1. Role of the researcher 88 5.4.2. Academic 90 5.4.3. Zeitgeist 90 5.4.4. Participants 90 5.4.5. Co-constructions 92 5.5. Process of inquiry 92 5.6. Process of analysis 93 5.7. Process of writing - movie metaphor 94 Chapter 6 - The search for home: A dialectic of alienation and belonging 95 6.1. Introducing the participants 96 N 6.1. 1. Natalie - playing off key: the struggle to be.. .long 96 6.2.2. Trevor - the Greek hero: bearing the seeds of his own alienation 98 6.2.3. Rabbi Kahn - the hearth of the matter 98 6.2.4. Lisa - normalcy: the tyranny and stability 101 6.2.5. Carl- red rover, red rover...home is always over 103 6.2. Construction of the emerging themes 108 6.2.1. Close to home - centrality of the notion 109 6.2.2. Notions of home 112 6.2.3. Not home alone 119 6.2.4. Histories inform the notion of home 120 6.2.5. Echoes of the double helix- A b LeI lEo N nAgTil n 0 9 N 122 6.2.6. The dialectic of alienation and belonging 138 6.2.7. Identity 140 6.2.8. Apart from - A part of 141 6.2.9. Separating home and belonging 142 6.3. Meta-themes of co-construction 6.3.1. Amplification of meanings in the crossroads of conversation 143 6.3.2. Amplification and silencing of identity at the crossroads of connection 147 6.3.3. My experience of alienation and belonging in the conversations 149 Chapter 7 - Reflections 150 References 157 v Chapter 1 Personal Prologue: Constructing the context The patterns that connect are always there and often unnoticed. Sometimes staring me in the face is the most beautiful spirograph I know it is there, somewhere in the held-at-bay part ofmy experiencing. The key turns and it all comes rushing in, ovenuhelming my senses, ovenuhelming me. I can see the invisible forces that are far greater than me, and I feel like a part ofthat pattern. It scares me to think that I am always a part ofthat pattern and usually just oblivious to it. What else am I also missing? The same reality stands in front ofmy eyes and I can see it in such different ways. I become part ofa different pattern in an instant. One way that it changes is in the dialogically created meaning making moment. The same event discussed with a different person becomes a different event, reveals a different pattern, through the words that it is clothed in, (or it is created into something different through the words that are used). The frame that is created in the intersubjective space is notjust a different opinion that is harmlessly tacked onto the list ofdifferent opinions, that leaves the event unchanged but rather the event is created and recreated, changed and becomes something different through the different speakings about it.