Abstract
There are a small group of mature adults in their 50s and 60s, members of the so-called third age that arrive at the door for psychotherapy.
As clients, they want to explore an overwhelming sense of being dis-located in space and time, and at odds with where they
find themselves living. They have a deep and profound sense of not belonging and of being rootless. These older, white, adults are the
baby-boomers of post World War II, and I refer to them as the
adult children of the colonies because they are of European descent
but born in the colonies of Africa. This paper describes the
experiences of two clients, Robert and Caitlin, who find themselves
feeling progressively psychically dis-located in South
Africa and confronting not only their limited future in terms of
impending death, but confronting existential givens of life that
prevent them at this late stage of life from returning home to
their ancestral lands. They present a unique group of older adult
clients, and like fish out of water, they have no sense of belonging
to Africa, and as a result, they experience a range of emotions
such as despair and depression with a concomitant sense
of fragmented identities. Discussion of the cases ensues and includes
the concept of intergenerational transmission of trauma,
fragmented identities, and belonging as linked to ancestral lands.