All Publications


  • Self and Secrecy in Early Islam INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES Mann, M. 2010; 7 (3): 240–42

    View details for DOI 10.1002/aps.258

    View details for Web of Science ID 000212427300007

  • The formation and development of individual and ethnic identity: insights from psychiatry and psychoanalytic theory. American journal of psychoanalysis Mann, M. A. 2006; 66 (3): 211-224

    Abstract

    This paper describes the concept of identity formation, examining the historical development of identity, particularly ethnic identity. The author distinguishes the normative developmental achievement of self and group identity with pathological identity diffusion due to an earlier attachment disorder. The clinical case of a young male's experience of his Persian family's immigration to a new host country details the challenges encountered in ethnic identity formation and its interference in consolidating this ongoing process. The complicated task of self identity formation during this phase of development in the face of parental unresolved and ambivalent attitudes toward their own sense of threatened self and group identity diffusion is discussed. Parental intrapsychic conflict combined with environmental conflict such as racism, prejudice, and more recent paranoia toward Middle Eastern immigrant families interferes further with the normal identity formation process. The paper elaborates the compromised bicultural identity of a youngster who struggles through his developmental life phases.

    View details for PubMedID 16964540

  • Immigrant parents and their emigrant adolescents: the tension of inner and outer worlds. American journal of psychoanalysis Mann, M. A. 2004; 64 (2): 143-153

    Abstract

    This article examines different experiences of immigrant parents and their children in transit between the parents' ethnic world and American culture through three clinical cases: a 16-year-old male, whose mother is Persian and father East Indian and who presents with depression and lack of focus; an 18-year-old girl, whose mother is Nigerian and father African American and who was reporting depressive symptoms and confusion about sexual identity; and an 18-year-old depressed male from an Assyrian Iraqi background whose parents both are from Northern Iraq, but have lived in the United States for 20 years. Adolescents of immigrant families have much more complicated tasks during this phase of their development to establish a future sense of self-identity. A well-consolidated sense of self-identity is more complicated for these types of multiethnic immigrant families. The adolescents must rely on parental ego functions and their coherent sense of identity to weather this stage of their turbulent experience. In their strong fantasy framework, these adolescents strive to belong to their new peer groups, in which parents do not belong, particularly when the immigrant parents present a variety of different social and cultural values discordant to the contemporary culture. The cases suggest that both positive and negative aspects of ethnic identification become diluted during adolescence, when identification with parental mores occurs.

    View details for PubMedID 15138384