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I was fortunate to be present when Kristina Schellinski launched her book in London, at the Society of Analytical Psychology, and I was struck by the significance of her main thesis that some adult patients discover that they are what she calls ‘replacement children’, often identified with a previous child who has died or who is missing. This condition presents with some recognizable symptoms that may delay personal development and hinder the capacity for these adults to feel that they are fully alive and can live a creative life. Since noting the influence of the book on my own clinical work, I wonder if the title and definition of a replacement child may be too narrow. A child may have been designated in a parent's mind for a particular purpose, not necessarily after the death of a previous child, and these children are compelled to identify with the role. So Schellinski's ideas are relevant to a broader range of patients than her title would suggest.
In the introduction, Murray Stein reminds us that Jung was a replacement child as his mother had given birth to two stillborn girls and an infant boy who died before Jung was born. The chapter about famous replacement children presents compelling evidence that this role may well have influenced some of the concepts Jung writes about.
Surely everything we write is likely to have a personal foundation, something of personal significance that arouses our interest and deep curiosity, and Schellinski reveals in the prologue that she is herself a replacement child. Her brother died aged two from appendicitis when her mother was already three months pregnant with Kristina. She considers that to hide this fact would risk another kind of replacement: ‘I do not wish to hide my story behind that of my courageous clients who share authentically their experiences, neither do I wish to have my experience vicariously reflected in their cases’ (p. xxii).
The book begins with the development of the condition of the replacement child, fo