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Pollock, G.H. (1986). Chapter 7: Abandonment. The Reconstruction of Trauma: Its Significance in Clinical Work, 105-120

Chapter 7: Abandonment

George H. Pollock, M.D., Ph.D.

Over the years I have had, and continue to work with patients, directly or through supervised analyses, who were actually abandoned totally and permanently for critical periods of their childhood; or who were adopted at birth; who were abandoned by a divorced parent who did not obtain custody; who were abandoned when one or both parents suicided when the patient was a young child; who had a parent desert the family; who were placed in orphanages or foster homes because of economic issues; who had one or both parents institutionalized for serious emotional illness; who felt they were abandoners either by giving up newborns for adoption or having induced abortion, or who divorced; who felt they were abandoning their elderly parents by placing them in nursing homes; who gave pets up for adoption or “put them away”; or who lived with one or both depressed parents, where there was no physical separation but there was emotional abandonment or threat of this.

These latter patie

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