The Replacement Child
Reclaiming of the Self
Recorded Saturday 5 February 2022
With Zack Eleftheriadou, Andrea Sabbadini, and Kristina Schellinski
CPD Credits: 3.5 hours
Families face intense emotional pain when a child has died or gone missing. For complex reasons, this loss and trauma can remain unresolved and unconscious across one or more generations. This powerful psychological atmosphere can impact any other child in the family but it is especially powerful for the child born after the loss.
In this conference, Kristina Schellinski, a Jungian analyst, will be citing from her book, “Individuation for Adult Replacement Children.
READ MORE...Ways of Coming into Being” (2019) and will outline her ideas on the ‘replacement child’ through illuminating images, Jungian literature, and examples of famous historical figures who were replacement children. Andrea Sabbadini, a psychoanalyst, known for his scholarly publications on the experience of loss as depicted in the arts and cinema, as well as through his published work entitled The Replacement Child (in the text Boundaries and Bridges, 2014), will present a psychoanalytic account of the diverse ways the replacement child condition can manifest in adult life. The speakers will address how replacement child dynamics can leave a person with a confusing and fragmented identity, relational difficulties, and sense of existential insecurity. Through clinical material, we will learn the significance of recognising this condition and how these unconscious themes can be sensitively considered within the therapeutic relationship.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 3.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.
Access to the Talks On Demand runs for 365 days from the date of purchase.
FULL PROGRAMME
Kristina Schellinski
Analytic Work with Adult Replacement Children
Many patients suffer from the replacement child condition, a long-term relational hidden trauma. This diagnosis is often overlooked, due to family secrets, loyalties, or unawareness of the circumstances. To help therapists and analysts recognize and treat this syndrome, Kristina shall illustrate core elements with symbols, images, and clinical examples. Psychologically, the hope for an adult replacement child lies in the rediscovery of the essence of its original being. In the individuation process, adult replacement children can gain a deep understanding of the long-term consequences of their replacing role and reconnect with their own unique individual self, to discover: “This is who I am”.
Q&A
Andrea Sabbadini
On Not Being (Entirely) Oneself
Andrea will explore the sense of ‘not being (entirely) oneself’ experienced by many individuals who had been conceived by their parents with the wish to replace a child who had recently died. Such an uncanny experience is characterised by a disturbance in the sense of identity, compromised by parental projections, expectations and demands. Children growing up as ‘replacements’ for someone else often suffer from a sense of confusion and from the emotional and social consequences of feeling inauthentic in their relationships. As illustration, he shall describe in some detail the history and analytic journey of one of his adult ‘replacement child’ patients.
Q&A
Dr Zack Eleftheriadou interviews Andrea Sabbadini and Kristina Schellinski
Q&A with both speakers