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Bilingualism

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Bilingualism refers to the individual's ability to be fluent in two distinct languages. Bilingualism is becoming increasingly relevant to the work of clinical professionals, given the rapidly changing demographic makeup of the United States. The 1996 U.S. Census attributed much of this change to increased birthrates among Latino and American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut populations, as well as a substantial increase in immigration rates. Consider, for example, that in the year 2000, ethnic minority youth constituted approximately 30% of the entire U.S. population. Some demographers estimate that almost 3,000 immigrants arrive in the United States each day, contributing approximately 1 million individuals to annual population figures. Because large numbers of immigrants in the United States speak their language of origin and subsequently acquire the ability to speak English, there is a vast need for bilingual clinical professionals.

Although not often a focus of psychological literature and clinical training, language is incredibly relevant to the enterprise of psychotherapy. Its relevance becomes especially apparent when we consider that what psychotherapists engage in is frequently referred to as “the talking cure.” Thus, it is important that the clinical professional be conversant in the language through which the patient experiences his or her world. When working with the bilingual patient in psychotherapy, it is important not only to understand the verbal meaning of what the patient is saying, but also to understand the cultural representations that are communicated through the use of one or more languages. In this sense, language is representational of the cultural context in which psychotherapy occurs. Understanding the complexity of the cultural values associated with a language is critical for understanding the dual language systems of the bilingual patient.

History of Bilingualism in Psychotherapy

Bilingualism was a part of early psychoanalytic work, as Sigmund Freud spoke German, a second language for many of his English-speaking United States patients. It was only in 1949, however, that bilingualism began to be written about in the psychoanalytic literature. This work involved the presentation of a case with a bilingual woman who spoke English and German. The woman's language of origin was German and she acquired English as a second language when she immigrated to the United States during her adolescence. Seeking psychotherapy as an adult, the patient refused to speak German and spoke only English in psychotherapy. Ultimately, it was only when the patient shared her anxieties in German, the language of her childhood, that she was able to share infantile sexual material. In this case, it was important to acknowledge how the context in which the patient's language capabilities were encoded had an influence on the language the patient chose to speak in psychotherapy. The author of the aforementioned case, for example, talked about how the patient came to the United States during World War II at a time in her life when survival was not taken for granted. Hence, to speak in German, her native language, would have called up the traumatic experiences associated with having to leave her homeland. The author concluded that recollections from a particular time period in one's life were accessed only when discussed in the language in which these experiences were encoded. The opposite was also thought to be true, meaning that the patient might choose to avoid speaking about an experience in the language in which it was encoded as a defense against experiencing painful material. Another early work, published in 1950, looked at psychotherapy processes when treatment occurred between a like-matched bilingual psychotherapist and patient. The focus of this writing was to examine defenses connected to switching languages in the psychotherapy session. The implication of this work was that different self-experiences were organized by language. More recent literature has discussed how language organizes one's sense of self and has explored the duality of the bilingual/bicultural person's world. Neurological research further supports this contention as it indicates that languages are stored in different areas of the cortex for bilinguals.

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