stranger

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n.

1. One who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance.
2. A foreigner, newcomer, or outsider.
3. One who is unaccustomed to or unacquainted with something specified; a novice: a stranger to our language; no stranger to hardship.
4. A visitor or guest.
5. Law. One that is neither privy nor party to a title, act, or contract.

[Middle English, from Old French estrangier, from estrange, strange. See strange.]

noun

A person coming from another country or into a new community: alien, émigré, foreigner, newcomer, outlander, outsider. See native/foreign.

n

Definition: person who is unfamiliar
Antonyms: acquaintance, familiar, friend, local, native

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Fear of strangers (or stranger anxiety) is a normal emotional response that occurs in the second half of the first year of life; the concept was introduced and developed by René Spitz, who called it "eight-month anxiety."

This construction was the result of direct observation from a developmental psychoanalytic perspective. The fear of strangers reaction signals a point where development has encountered a difficulty or even gone off track. According to Spitz's conceptual framework, as outlined in "Anxiety and Infancy" (1950), eight-month anxiety marks a decisive phase in object relations: the infant's mental accession to object permanence. This is in contrast to the social smiling of the preceding period, which is addressed indifferently to both unknown and familiar faces, and comes after archaic pre-objectal fears and anxieties. It is referred to as the "first genuine manifestation of anxiety" (Spitz and Cobliner, 1965; Spitz 1968), and thus figures in interpretations and differences of opinion relating to separation anxiety and theories of anxiety in general.

Spitz's principle of "organizers" of mental life places eight-month anxiety as the second organizer. However the embryological metaphor implied by the term "organizer" has been contradicted by demonstrations of early interactive capacities in babies, while fear of strangers has been marginalized within metapsychology by attachment theory, which has attracted many adherents. John Bowlby argues that intrusions upon the primary need for attachment cause the infant to reject the traumatizing face. Serge Lebovici developed the concept of eight-month anxiety into a primary phobia with the proposed name "Stranger's-Face Phobia." This is a proto-phobia that unfolds via displacement onto the stranger of the infant's aggressive impulses against the mother. Thus it both protects her imago and appeals to her return. From the viewpoint of current psychosomatic theories of mental development in France (Pierre Marty), stranger anxiety evinces the emergence of various psychic functions. The absence of stranger anxiety is a symptom of mental deficiencies and is a remarkable indicator of the silence of the mechanisms of inter-relational and intra-psychical defense, which may be discerned from six to twelve months in disorders such as eczema (already observed by Spitz), asthma, anorexia nervosa, and the severe disorders caused by deficiencies in maternal care which are categorized under the name "empty behavior syndrome" (Léon Kreisler).

The distinction between separation anxiety and stranger anxiety has been clinically proven by the fact that they appear independently of one another. When it is not experiencing acute sensitivity to separation, the separated child (le petit allergique) is all smiles to whomever it sees, stranger and familiar alike, like the baby described in the first of Spitz's organizers. As pure affect deprived of representation that repeats the baby's distress at being separated from the mother, anxiety separation affords a view onto the future development of eight-month anxiety, which is itself a prototype of object-anxieties, and hence the original prototype for mental development itself.

Bibliography

Spitz, René A. (1950). Anxiety in infancy. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 31.

—LÉON KREISLER

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A third person; anyone who is not a party to a particular legal action or agreement.

For example, all those who are not parties to a particular contract are considered strangers to the contract.

IN BRIEF: n. - Anyone who does not belong in the environment in which they are found More unfamiliar, unknown, odd, or extraordinary.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. — Anna Akhmatova, Source: Requiem, composed mainly 1935-1940, Epigraph, composed 1961.

Quotes:

"Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity." - Germaine Greer

"It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger." - Samuel Johnson

"The moment one accosts a stranger or is accosted by him is above all in this life the moment of drama... Whoever we meet watches us intently at the quick, strange moment of meeting, to see whether we are disposed to be friendly." - Haniel Long

"By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned; By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned." - Alexander Pope

"I do desire we may be better strangers." - William Shakespeare

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." - Tennessee Williams

See more famous quotes about Strangers

From a Freudian perspective, a stranger in a dream may symbolize meeting a part of one's own psyche, or shadow self. According to an ancient Chinese belief, a stranger in one's dream is another soul from the spirit realm.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - fremmed, ukendt

Nederlands (Dutch)
vreemdeling, vreemd persoon, nieuwkomer

Français (French)
n. - étranger, inconnu

Deutsch (German)
n. - Fremder, Besucher

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ξένος, άγνωστος

Italiano (Italian)
straniero

Português (Portuguese)
n. - forasteiro (m)

Русский (Russian)
незнакомец, чужестранец, посторонний, новичок

Español (Spanish)
n. - forastero, extraño, desconocido, extranjero

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - främling, obekanta, utomstående, icke ledamot (parl.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
陌生人, 门外汉

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 陌生人, 門外漢

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 낯선 사람, 새로 온 사람, 방문객

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 見知らぬ人, 初めて来た人, 不案内な人, 不慣れな人

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) غريب, اجنبي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮זר, נוכרי‬

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