Collateral Damage: An Immigrant’s Psychic Contiguity to a War Back Home

article

Nahaleh Moshtagh

Abstract

This essay traces the psychic reverberations of watching one’s homeland at war (Iran-Israel war [June 13-25, 2025]) from a distance. Anchored in a single moment of rupture, it reflects on how memory, exile, and unformulated experience collide in the body and mind of the immigrant.

Keywords:

activism, attachment, brutality, exile, geopolitical forces, grief, immigration, Iran–Israel war, political consciousness, psychic contiguity, psychobiography, psychohistory, resentment, split-level psychology, survivor’s shame, war

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About the author

Nahaleh Moshtagh

Nahaleh Moshtagh, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. She is teaching faculty at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a recipient of the 2022 Edith Sabshin Teaching Award (APsaA), and a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She is Founder and Director of HamAva Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Tehran, Iran. Her publications appear in JAPA, Psychoanalytic Review, Modern Psychoanalysis, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She can be contacted at .

How to cite this article

Moshtagh, N. (2026). Collateral damage: An immigrant’s psychic contiguity to a war back home. Clio’s Psyche, 33(1), 49-55.

https://doi.org/10.70763/12e35d9186dd72fe62fd039385890b9c