Psych thoughts: bicultural/dissociation

[azurelunatic]

I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on the incidence of dissociative coping mechanisms in people identifying as bicultural, especially when the two cultures in question are distinctly separated, say one culture in the home, and the other culture in the school or workplace.

I might be really interested in that study and the results.

Comments

[mnfiddledragon.livejournal.com]

*nod* well - I'm not sure about any psychological studies, but I *know* there are anthropological studies, I just can't remember any off the top of my head. You could also look up old ethnographic studies on immigrant populations in the US - I'd look up Irish ones if you can't find any Hispanic ones - there may even be Hmong - and possibly Somali - those IIRC are in my opinion hot spot type cultures where you're more likely to see some interesting things going on because the parents are less likely to want to break away from their primary culture.

There are some other interesting things done with children of immigrants on down to 3rd and 4th generation.

[azurelunatic]

I was thinking, specifically: my own dissociative identity condition was caused by the difference in home vs. school, and the fact that I was addressed by different names at home and at school. Home and school were really not all that different, both being different flavors of US culture. I'm wondering if my experience is really all that uncommon, in dissociating to deal with the culture shock. It's dissociated identities to function in the different environments, rather than dissociated identities as the result of abuse, which is the sort that gets most of the attention.

I feel, paradoxically, very lonely, though I suspect that there are any number of people in a similar mental situation.