FREUD’S UNCANNY IN AN INTERCULTURAL MOTHERHOOD

A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Based on the concept of the Uncanny (Das Unheimlich), this study analyzes a doubly unsettling clinical case and discusses the feeling of estrangement experienced by a migrant mother who does not speak her children's language, aiming to articulate clinical practice with psychoanalytic theory. Considering the premise that language is one of the primary vehicles for the transmission of culture, values and teachings, the common challenges of motherhood are intensified by the linguistic barrier. Nevertheless, the mother chooses to be analyzed in the very language she claims not to master, enabling the symbolization of her relationship with the language. The case brings together motherhood and cultural anxieties in the face of linguistic and migratory obstacles, namely, a double anxiety and a double absence.