The self and the unknown. Experiencing psychic limits when travelling

By Jens Clausen

Subject:
It is not only famous writers such as Goethe and Stendhal who have often reached the limit of their psychic capacities by the alienation that occurs when travelling. What happens to our psyche when we travel?

Target audience:
Doctors and therapists treating tourists, employees involved in tourism, journalists, tourists, students of literature, psychology or psychiatry, avid readers and tourists.

Content:

Taking a trip abroad, exploring far-away places, leaving established roles behind and stepping into new territory full of expectation and promise. This is the pivotal point of a fragile happiness and at the same time the perilous moment of emotional collapse. Because when travelling, unlike at any other time, the fragility of the self emerges: Decisions that were made, relationships that have been established, the life that has been lived, all these things can be knocked out of balance when crossing thresholds.

Jens Clausen links travel literature with psychic aspects and asks the question of how people lose themselves when they travel. Anxiety and panic attacks are unsettling, dissociation alters perception, depression makes you incapable of action, and psychoses confront with the complexity of internal and external boundaries. Writers such as Goethe, Hölderlin, Rilke, Schwarzenbach, Brinkmann, Sebald or Kertész have their say, and their experiences and crises in foreign countries are probably familiar to the many seasoned travellers among us.

Author:

Dr. phil. Jens Clausen, born 1954 in Hamburg, academic studies in Educational Science, German language and literature, and History. Training at the Institut für Gruppenanalyse in Heidelberg. Occupational experience in child and youth psychiatry, psychosomatic and social psychiatry; teaching and further education in the area of social and therapeutic pedagogy.

Original title:

"Das Selbst und die Fremde. Über psychische Grenzerfahrungen auf Reisen"

Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn, 340 Pages, 19.95 EUR
First published in 2007

For further information please contact: Ms Kerstin Zander.