A Qualitative Account of Linguistic Transference in a Post-Monolingual Childhood

This paper considers how the experience of living between languages inflects the inner life and psychodynamic therapy treatment of a young Korean woman in psychodynamic psychotherapy. It presents a case study of self-translation, linguis-tic displacement, and linguistic transference to listen to how the participant narrates the psychology of translation between English and Korean, and how her sense of self can split across languages and linguistic attachments. This study centers the vicissitudes of personal drives, conflicts, politics, and history related to the choice of acquiring a new language, and the risks and rewards of slipping into and out of different languages in a post-monolingual condition. By tuning into linguistic and translational shifts, stutters, and gaps, the study presents the relevance of these concerns for both researchers and clinicians.