Homeless: the story of a wandering Self. Inhabitable mirrors for possible reflections

7
INTRODUCTION
Studying great social exclusion puts the psycho-social researcher into a complicated
situation, for many reasons. First of all, excluded individuals do not represent a compact
population: they are a heterogeneous human aggregate more than an actual social
group, and so, it is difficult to account for them (for their number, features and needs).
Moreover, homeless people develop many survival strategies that make very hard to
establish a real dialogue with them: avoidance, residual mythomania(Emmanuelli 2009) and traumatic wandering seduction(Mathieu 2011) are relational patterns that seriously
impair a significant contact with people living out in the street. Finally, studying great
exclusion entails exploring an unsettling, anguishing social and psychological margin,
looking into a twisting mirror by which the basic values of our society(usefulness as a
measure for lifes worth, individualism, ownership, mass consumption, velocity and
productivity) are distorted. Nevertheless, as a plethora of researches conducted
especially in the last decade proves, (Castel 1994; DePastino 2003; Douville et al. 2012;
Emmanuelli 2002, 2005, 2006, 2009; Johnson 2008; Lavanco and Santiniello 2009;
Mathieu 2011; Moore 2007) such margin needs investigation. Indeed, as Emmanuelli
rigorously contends, great exclusion entails a great psychic sufferance and a state of
emergency: people inhabiting such social and psychological margin have lost any sense
of inhabiting not only space, but also and most of all their own body, their temporal
dimension and any possible interpersonal bond.
Following Emmanuellis reasoning, and grounding my theoretical approach to great
exclusion especially on recent French clinical research on homelessness, in the present
study I try to explore another territory that homeless people have stopped inhabiting:
their personal story.
Indeed, this inquiry is a psycho-social exploration of the wandering minds narrative
processes. I coined the term wandering mind from the French errance psychique(Mathieu 2011), and I define it as the mental configuration that a person living in great
exclusion is likely to develop. Starting from the assumption of a strong correlation
Una femmina spulciava la criniera di un maschio.
Era una savana,
anzi una palude nella savana.
Una palude in cui potevi cadere
E non uscirne mai più.
Ambrogio, street poet, Infinite porte
8
between narrative processes and sense-giving tasks, Im interested in establishing what
kind of role self-narration can play in rehabilitating homeless peoples sense of self. The
major aim of this research, therefore, is to show that the helping relationship between
psychologists or social workers and homeless people can find a meaningful anchorage
on a storytelling ground. In other words, in the present study I focus on homeless
peoples autobiographical reasoning, because I reckon that their stories are the most
metaphorically and symbolically powerful representations of an extreme social margin
where living becomes surviving and humanity is reified. In order to see such margin,
hence, the psycho-social researcher needs to move, both physically and mentally, in
order to go towards its inhabitants. Furthermore, asking excluded individuals for their
words and their stories is a first act of symbolic re-inclusion of these people: re-inclusion
in the others gaze, thoughts and interpersonal rituals. Indeed, the fundamental mirror
activated by horizontal social bonds is necessary for rehabilitating self-reflection, which
is seriously impaired in people living in great exclusion. Telling someone else ones story
entails first of all acknowledging such story as ones own , and considering it as a
meaningful, linear, sharable whole of experiences: as previous literature has shown,
such awareness is not trivial all for excluded people. I reckon that such
acknowledgement is the necessary starting point for the (apparently) paradoxical task of
coming out of the street.
The first two Chapters of this paper are devoted to the overview of the two phenomena
I am correlating, i. e. homelessness on the one hand, and narrative processes(and
especially autobiographical reasoning) on the other.
Therefore, in Chapter 1, I present the culturally shared conception of the homeless
person, divided between the high image of the Romantic Wanderer and the unsettling
character of the hobo. Then, I delve a possible definition of homelessness as a gradual
process of social bonds weakening and marginalisation. At this purpose, I examine
culturally shared stereotypes and beliefs on such phenomenon, I take into account
official definitions of homelessness, I analyse the mutual implications of the ideas of
home and homelessness, and I consider the influence that living outside exercises on the
three fundamental landmarks of human identity (personal identity, cultural identity and
social status). Moreover, in this Chapter, I report various official quantitative surveys on
homelessness. I do it for a twofold aim: on the one hand, in order to provide the reader
with an idea such phenomenons extent respectively in the World, in the U.S., in Europe,
in Italy and in Milan (where I actually conducted my research), and on the other hand,
for showing that, in research on the scarcely accountable field of great exclusion,
quantitative surveys are doomed to lack precision, objectivity and reliability, and
therefore they have to be integrated by qualitative research. Finally, I introduce
Emmanuelli (2013) and Castel (1994)s respective paradigms of great exclusion as a
gradual process.
Then, in Chapter 2, I state and argue the basic assumption of my study, i. e. the idea that
identity is narratively constructed, and that human autobiographical reasoning needs
9
the others to be listened, modelled, understood and re-invented with them. So, I focus
on narrative processes as a fundamental component of human reasoning, and I
especially remark the role they play in:
- giving sense to experience;
- developing a meaningful temporal dimension (turning a chronologic sequence
into a causal one);
- correlating Past, Present and Future Self (thus valuing and making coherent
ones conception of his or her identity as a progressive life -path);
- making possible and thinkable the semantic field of action;
- consolidating ones belongingness t o society, outlining ones identity as a
particular position in society and sharing knowledge, values and beliefs with the
others.
Moreover, I underline that any ego can configure itself only if he or she is involved into a
dialectic relationship with alter, where such alter is at the same time everything ego is
not (or no more, or not yet) and an actual interlocutor. Discursive practices are for
human beings the occasion of a mutual reflection, and therefore of mutual positioning in
shared implicit metaphors and symbols. In our own autobiographical reasoning, we use
words and gestures deeply charged with symbolic placeholders for arranging in our
cognitive space our Present, Past and Future Self, and other Selves as well. Therefore,
we position ourselves and we are positioned by others storylines. Our ephemeral self is
hence the provisory product of personal, interpersonal and social narratives, which act
as ever re-configuring networks where we look for our position.
A wide and various literature from philosophy to experimental psychology and
narratology wondered about the relationship between narration, identity and
interpersonal bonds. My theoretical references are therefore very heterogeneous: Freud
(1923), Erikson (1968), Maclntyre (1981), Ricoeur (1983), White (1987), Bruner (1996;
2002), Czarniawska(1998), Davies and Harré (1999), Habermas and Bluck (2000), Mc
Adams (2001), Petrosino (2013).
Furthermore, in this Chapter, I correlate narration and homelessness, outlining a double
connection: on the one hand, I briefly report the historical development of the Western
cultural narration of homelessness, and on the other hand I analyse the main features of
homeless peoples narration. In respect to the collectively constructed, shared and
handed down narration of homelessness, it is fundamental to take into account the
stigmatization process(Goffman 1963), which is tightly tied to social judgement, fear of
contagion and self-fulfilling prophecy, and which entails social exclusion. Also Durkheim
(1893)s work - and especially his idea of anomie- helps one to understand the
connection between stigma and social isolation. Such psycho-social mechanisms are
remarkable in the historical development of the collective narration of homelessness
(Nelson 1999; DePastino 2003), which also reflects a change of social fears and
concerns. Then, in respect to homeless peoples narration, I reckon that it basically
10
represents the endless effort to recover the damaged experiential map of the
wandering mind. Indeed, as Emmanuelli (2013) effectively explains, life dans la rue undermines the four fundamental landmarks of human experience: temporal
experience, spatial experience, ones sense of his or her body and ones relation with the
others. In relation to time, in particular, Emmanuelli (2003) talks about a monochronic
temporal dimension: the wandering mind inhabits a kind of perpetual present, a flat
chronology that does not flow, a time which has lost its arrow. The wandering mind is
therefore stuck in a repetition of a series of equally insignificant instants, and
simultaneously, in a repetition of fragmented, frozen and seldom listened to self-
narrations. In order to evade such uninhabitable repetition, I remark that homeless
people construct mimetic and mythic projections of their self, that is to say, fictive Past
and Future Selves. Emmanuelli (2009)s concept of residual mythomania plays a
fundamental role in such self-construction. The very act of wandering, moreover,
represents a symbolic manipulation of space, a way of giving it some structure and some
meaning, and it can be seen as a spatialisation of time(Goldberg 1994) as well. A space-
pathy(Mathieu 2011) is clearly remarkable in the wandering minds discourses and
behaviours: where there is no inside(no private space), the outside becomes unbearable
and untellable. Paradoxically, the outside the street- is felt by homeless people as
somewhere to come out from. At the same time, the street becomes a scene to expose
ones psychic sufferance, and ones body is the protagonist of such wordless and
obscene(Mathieu 2011) representation. Proxemics(Hall 1966), that is to say, the
dynamics between ones body and ones and the others space, is therefore a
fundamental code to take into account when listening to homeless peoples
autobiographical reasoning.
Finally, Chapter 3 represents the core of the present study. There, I account for my
choice of conducting a qualitative inquiry, and I report the hypothesis, methods and
results of my research. The theoretical skeleton of such study is made up of a Basic
Assumption and three hypotheses, which are rather Research Questions:
 BA: There is a fundamental connection between narration and sense of self.
 RQ1: Is narration difficult for the wandering mind?
 RQ2: Is sense of self compromised in the wandering mind?
 RQ3: Is rehabilitating narration a means of rehabilitating sense of self in the
wandering mind?
The practical part of my study takes place in Milan, from October 2013 to January 2014.
Methodologically speaking, in my research I make use of both moderately participant
observation(Spradley and Baker 1980; Gobo 2008) and semi-structured interviews. As a
moderately participant observer, I explore three different margins of great exclusion: I
take part as a volunteer in Fondazione Isacchi Samayas mobile nocturnal unities, I enter
as an authorized observer and helper at NAGA (a refuge for irregular migrant people,
most of whom are homeless) and I visit the biggest dormitory of Milan, Viale Ortles.
Moreover, I interview nine subjects: all of them are homeless men.
11
I designed my semi-structured interviews on the basis of a story-telling paradigm,
modeled on the Chapter task of the Emerging Life Story Interview(ELSI) implemented
by Reese et al. (2010). During each interview, I ask the person I am dialoguing with to
think about his life as if it were a book, and I suggested that, in this way, his story could
be articulated into different C hapters. First of all, I invite him to focus on the last
Chapter of his book, that is, on the Present. I ask him to tell me about this Chapter (by
means of written key-words, or drawing something, or simply talking), and then I inquire
after the previous C hapter, and so on, back in time. Then, I encourag e my interviewed
subject to think about the next C hapter of hisnovel, trying to figure it out. Fin ally, I
use a simple tool (the Personal Emblem) to sketch out my subjects personal values
and beliefs.
The interviews setting corresponds to the street itself: my dialogues with homeless
people take place in parks, in bars and often at McDonalds. As I will explain in details,
this is a precise methodological choice, tightly tied to the going towards attitude of my
study. I record and subsequently analyze each interview.
In order to elucidate my method of analysis of collected data, here I report the chart I
designed: it is organized around six basic indicators that I try to deduce from my
subjects visible behaviours and narrations:
1.
Development
of ones
horizontal
social bonds
Stories about important past relationships, marriage, sons, divorce.
Living on ones own VS joining a little community. P resent relationship
with ones family. Ones vision of friendship, trust VS diffidence towards
other people. Stories involving help from others VS abandonment or
treason. Stories about present interpersonal relationships. Desire of a
family VS lack of such desire.
2.
Development
of ones
relation with
home Stories about childhood and adolescence, early relationship with home
and the primary object. Stories about past life periods spent changing
many places, or living mostly outside VS stories of a miss ed home.
Stories of past instability. Ones idea of inside/outside. Ones idea of
belonging/not belonging. Preferred kind of shelter. Desire of a home in
the future VS lack of such desire.
3.
Residual
Mythomania
Prevalence of unlikely, implausible stories about ones past, present
and future. Character-like behaviours, apparently codified formula or
gestures. Often repeated phrases, narrative obsessions. Stories
involving an imaginary past and imaginary (and symbolic) tragic
breaches, aimed at justifying the present condition. Evident personal
mythology, with dramatic events, good and bad characters. Prevalence
of themes connected to ones persecution by the others, ones bad
luck, and/or unrealistic optimism about the future.
4.
Narrative
coherence VS
incoherence
Temporal coherence: stories with a clear beginning, development and
end, overall consistent order between narrated events VS confused
stories, with no linear temporal development, overlapping or mixing up
of time dimensions. Causal coherence: narration of events determined
by physical causality and most of all by human motivation, overall clear
mind theory, attribution of intentions to oneself and to other agents,
reasonable connections between ones past, present and future self VS
narration of unexplained, mutually independent events, lack of a clear
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mind theory, narration of unmotivated behaviours of oneself and the
others. Thematic coherence: prevalence of some themes that return
within different stories, symbolic relevance of certain contents VS
confused thematic and symbolic elements within ones discourse, lack
of a common thread among different stories.
5.
Coherent VS
incoherent
idea of ones
Self
Continuity among different descriptions of oneself, overall coherence
among stories whit a self-definition and a self-affirmation value,
connection between past, present and future self VS incompatible self-
descriptions, mutually contradictory self-defining stories, behavioural
signals of conflict and anxiety when telling something about oneself.
6.
Search of
self-
reflection
Qualitative interaction with the interlocutor, reaction to the
interlocutors reactions to oneself, explicit or implicit demand of
positive confirmations, meta-reflection on ones stories, proxemics
communication, bodily signs of empathy and participation to the
emotions ones story arouses in the interlocutor.
Of course, human phenomena are impossible to reduce to a chart, and the
unaccountable nature of the wandering mind is especially reluctant to such
simplification. Nevertheless, the sensory and emotional overload that the researcher
undergoes in the course of his inquiry out in the street makes necessary to find a clear
theoretical model on which one can ground his observations. Otherwise, the danger is
sinking into the black hole of an excessive closeness to ones interviewed subjects, losing
any chance of abstract reflection and therefore failing any possible helping relationship.
As the reader will remark, looking for the right distance for dialoguing with people living
in great exclusion, and seeking to establish a meaningful inter-viewing relationship
based on a nuanced and rich communicative pattern with them are the main
methodological concerns of the present research.
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CHAPTER	1
Homeless: accounting for the unaccountable
Wandering is a disturbing word. Its ambiguous meaning gives shape to a cultural
stereotype which takes place in a grey area between fascination and revulsion. Indeed,
by thinking at the words, images and representations to which such emotionally
powerful concept is usually linked in a social perspective, we can outline a polarized
semantic field. On the one hand of this meaning area, we find the Romantic image of
Der Wanderer
1
, a high symbol of freedom, a spiritual solitary hero who traverses life as
an adventurous journey, looking for his rationally elusive self in the natural world
outside, a mystery of which he is a part and that mirrors his psychic dimension. On the
other hand, wandering deals with the social stereotype of the hobo, the tramp, the
homeless person, who embodies the blameworthy condition of existing without any
house, job, role or purpose. In this sense, to wander means to belong nowhere, both
in a literal and in a figurative way: a vagabond is someone who walks aimlessly, who
lives without any scope, too lazy to earn a living, socially useless, perhaps dangerous,
probably a heavy drinker, dirty for sure.
Remarkably enough, these two opposite representations of wandering, which are both
at work in our cultural perception of people living on the margins of society, have
some characteristics in common. First of all, a shared point is the projection of the self
on the world outside. Indeed, as we will see later, this is an essential feature of what we
1
Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer(Wanderer above the Sea of Fog) is a famous painting
composed in 1818 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It represents a young
man who stands on the pinnacle of a mountain, turning his back to the onlooker and gazing the
natural landscape below him. The Wanderer is the Romantic image of Mankind, who never
knows where to go, nor towards which future, but who nonetheless is free and can reflect himself
in Nature, in deep contemplation of his soul.
Each calculating reduces the countable to the enumerated, in order to
make use of it for the next accounting. Calculating allows nothing but
the countable to emerge. Everything is just what it counts. () Calculating thinking coerces itself in the coercion of dominating
everything in respect of its process coherence. It cannot even suppose
that all that is countable in the calculation is already a whole before its
respective sums and its respective calculated products, a whole whose
unity certainly belongs to the unaccountable, which subtracts itself
and its disorienting character to the accounts grasp.
Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysic? Human beings dont suffer just for some events or
thoughts, but also because some processes in their
minds have not found any mirror, echo, listening or
repository, and so they keep wandering. We suffer for
all that wanders inside of ourselves with no allocation,
that is, with no subjectification.
Alain Ferrant, Manuel de psychologie et de
psychopathologie clinique générale And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called
the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space, and
meaning.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
14
could call the wandering mind
2
, that is the mind-setting that a person living in great
social exclusion is likely to develop. Both the Romantic Wanderer and the urban
clochard live outside, exposing themselves to physical environment and to other
peoples eyes. The intimate dimension of their li ves is put up, and the scene is the
external world: such exhibition represents the research of a reflection. The errant
person experiences the external dimension (the environment, the city, the others) as a
mirror of an intimacy which is incomprehensible and painful to deal with per se. The
Romantic Wanderer looks for himself within the mysteries of Nature, while the
homeless persons mute demand is often to be seen by the passers-by. Both these
emblematic figures strive to find a sense of belonging, intimacy and reflection outward.
Another similarity between the two sides of our cultural stereotype of the wanderer
can be deduced from the Latin etymology of the word errant: errare means to make a
mistake, to vacillate, to stray from the correct path. Therefore, in our cultural
representation, an errant person is someone who has made something wrong, and who,
for that reason, finds himself emarginated. Of course, the Romantic Wanderer is a very
different kind of errant compared to the clochard: the first one chooses to favour his
emotional insightfulness to cold rationality, and so his deviation is indeed a
philosophical choice against the logical approach to life, while the second one strays
from the correct path of social utility, that is production and work. This is the reason
why, if we tend to be fascinated by the Romantic side of the grey conceptual area
outlined by the word wandering, on the contrary were annoyed by the homeless person
we meet by the roadside: some mistakes are tolerated in the collective perception,
while others are socially forbidden, similar to taboos. Social uselessness is a powerful,
ancient, cross-cultural taboo.
The last feature that we can observe both in the positive and in the negative
representation of wandering is a situation of being in lack of something. Once again,
there is a fundamental difference in the existential level where this lack takes place
respectively in the two cases. In respect to the Romantic Wanderer, we can notice a lack
of philosophic answers (such as Who am I?, Why am I living?, Where is my place in
the world?): this kind of shortage causes a desire of research and exploration, a
feeling of Angst that gives rise to the wandering. On the other hand, in respect to the
clochard, we observe a much more pragmatic lack, which defines his entire identity: he
is home-less, without a home. As we are about to see in the next paragraph, such
specific shortage is the metaphor as well as the origin of our representation of homeless
people as people who have not and consequently as people who are not.
2
In his doctoral thesis Lerrance psychique des sujets SD F(2011), the psychologist Franck Mathieu
introduces this concept in order to explain how the particular and difficult life-style of homeless
people has a strong impact on their thoughts, perceptions and behaviour: vagrancy is not just a
matter of rambling bodies, its mostly a matter of wandering minds. Mathieus work has been a
fundamental source of theoretic tools for my research.
15
1.1 Definition-less
Especially in the last three decades, a plethora of studies on homelessness have been
published all over the Western world and especially in the U. S. This is of course the
confirmation of the importance and the seriousness of a dramatic and always increasing
social problem, but, probably, this is also  the evidence of a special Occidental
apprehension: our social system, which is founded on the role of the individual subject
as an agent, but most of all as a consumer (on his power, on his choice, on his self-
determination, on his abilities, on his responsibility, on his richness), can barely tolerate
the existence of individuals who dont have such a role, who wander outside the
systems dynamics, rules and expectations. Likely enough, homelessness is so disturbing
to us because it is the sign that something is wrong in our social organization.
In the words of father Gianni Notari:
The homeless person is not related to culturally shared values, rules and behaviours. He wanders
around, occupying the citys physical and relational space, but it doesnt belong to it. His
strangeness becomes for us a mirror that reflects an image of ourselves that we dont want to
see, and that we try to deny. It shows in plain view the mechanisms of a social system which
pushes out the non-integrated, weaker individuals. Indeed, the homeless persons condition is
the symbol of the social exclusion of those who cannot keep in step with a life-style shaped
around success, rapidity, liquidity, consumption(2009: 9).
Such vision of society is of course an unsettling one: it makes us aware that if, for some
reason, it happens that we ease down our step in life, we are likely to be excluded and
emarginated. This idea is rather unbearable at a psychological level. It is much easier for
us, normal members of society, to look down on homeless people, searching for
individualistic explanations of their condition, which underline their personal faults,
oddities and wrong choices, blaming their difficult situation only on their own failure
in life. It is a very simple psychological defensive mechanism, echoed and reinforced by
social dynamics which are always involved when a stereotyping process takes place
3
:
homeless people have fallen in a dramatic way, and this is because they are different,
abnormal, crazy, alcoholics. An (irrationally) optimistic conclusion follows: if we keep the
socially correct path, it is impossible for us to fall like them and share their fate.
This evident bias in the conceptualization of homelessness is probably one of the
reasons why the great number of researches on this matter has not yet produced a
consistent and positive definition of the problem.
Such lack of definition reflects in the words we use to mention people who live in an
emarginated condition. Indeed, if we think about the various labels which refer to this
3
Many studies have been published on this interesting and controversial subject. The first one
was a work that now is considered a classic in the field:  Allport, The nature of prejudice, Reading,
MA, Addison-Wesley, 1954.
16
population (homeless, roofless, SDF, hobos, tramps, bums, clochards, barboni), what
really stands out is a constant allusion to a lack, a shortcoming or a fault: these are
people without a home, or even without a shelter at all, vagrants and beggars with no
job, lazy, worthless people, walking with a limp (the French word clochard comes from
the ancient meaning of the verb clocher, that is to be lame) in every sense, with no
morals or self-respect (the Italian word barbone is a t ransformation of birbone, that
is rascal, scoundrel, and it is linked to the image of a physical sloppiness, as
barbone is also a great beard). In short: they are people out and without the basic
landmarks of a normal social existence. Homeless people are always out of place, as they
belong nowhere.
Even if we turn to official definitions of homelessness, we notice that the one dimension
that seems to be shared by this miscellaneous human group is the one of fragility,
exposure, and loss
4
:
- The first one is no definition, but rather a fundamental and systematically
violated declaration:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well -being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances
beyond his control. 5
- The U.S Department of Housing and Social Development describes a homeless
person as:
1. someone who lacks a fix, regular and adequate nocturnal dwelling;
2. someone who has a nocturnal dwelling:
a) in a public or private shelter, as a temporary accommodation:
b) in an organization, as a temporary accommodation;
c) in a public or private shelter, as a regular accommodation.
- For the Italian Minister of Social Politics a homeless person is someone who has
no stable dwelling and who lives in an uncertain condition, lacking an adequate
formal/informal supporting network, and therefore without a social status;
- For the Italian Federation for Homeless People(FIOPSD), these people are
individuals who live in a situation of material and immaterial poverty, affected
by a complex, dynamic and many-sided malaise;
4
The most part of the following official definitions of homelessness can be found in Lavanco and
Santiniello (2009: 19 and followings). I translated and updated them with more recent data, and I
added the first and the last one.
5
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 December 1948 by the UN
General Assembly.