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In our work with children of divorce, we have noted that the relinquishing of the parental unit as it serves the child's environmental and internal needs is a highly complex and painful process. Parental objects serve important internal, as well as external functions, and the loss of continuity in the parental relationship can serve as a “developmental interference”. After a divorce has occurred, a child may continue to have a relationship with both the custodial and non-custodial parent; however, there is inevitably a loss of the parental unit and the internal functions served by the child's relationship with that unit.
Children experience this loss in multi-determined ways, and attempt to handle it with the utilization of a variety of internal mechanisms. We have observed a striking and persistent fantasy in a number of children whose parents have divorced—the fantasy that the parents will be reconciled with one another and the lost family will be regained in some form. This paper will define the reconciliation fantasy, explore some of the determinants of its emergence and persistence in children of divorce, and discuss implications for therapeutic interventions.
The literature reflects no clear distinction between reunion wishes and reconciliation fantasies. Children who have been bereaved by the death of a parent have been cited as experiencing fantasies of being reunited with the lost parent (Nagera, 1970; Rochlin, 1953; ; Wolfenstein, 1965).
Children of divorced parents have been noted to experience similar fantasies and wishes (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1976; ). Reunion wishes in these instances imply the re-evoking of the lost object—through identification, acting out, or fantasies—and the continuation of the self's relationship with the object. The reconciliation fantasy, while it may take on certain aspects of the reunion wish, is used here to denote the child's wish for a continuation of the parenta