Orphans *

Orphans are often chosen as protagonists of literary fiction. This chapter presents the multilayered consequences of child-hood parental loss. The impact of parental loss during childhood is life-long. Its myriad manifestations can be broadly grouped under the following categories: continued intrapsychic relationship with the dead parent, mental pain and defenses against it, narcissistic imbalance, disturbances in the development of aggressive drive, problems in the realm of love and sexuality, disturbances in the subjective experience of time, and attitudes towards one’s own mortality. To be sure, a provision is important in the treatment of all patients but it acquires greater valence in those with a background of childhood parental loss. While they might not have consciously experienced or registered it as such during childhood, adults orphaned as children remain forever vulnerable to separation anxiety, or to use Fred Pine’s more evocative term, ‘separateness anxiety’; this involves discomfort and disorientation over the sense of separateness from others.