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September 15, 1964. SOME ASPECTS IN EARLY-ORPHAN ADULTS' ANALYSIS. Jose Remus Araico, M.D.
This presentation is a further elaboration of some ideas, developed in earlier papers, regarding the psychopathology and treatment of adults who had lost a parent in early childhood, and a report on an experimental modification in analytic technique, consisting of the interpolation of extra sessions with no time limit with some patients.
Citing Fenichel on the role of object loss in the etiology of traumatic neurosis in childhood, and adhering closely to Bowlby's concepts regarding mourning reactions to loss in infancy and childhood, the author correlates varied clinical manifestations in his patients with their incomplete or inadequate mourning in childhood for a dead parent. A child is not capable of 'mourning within the normal' and, therefore, is prone to fixations to incomplete mourning states, engendering both immediate and long-range pathological consequences within the personality. The early loss of a parent, before important Oedipal resolutions have been achieved, and especially if the loss has been sudden, imposes profound defensive and adaptational readjustments on the child, causes a disruption in normal maturational sequences, and sensitizes the child to respond with extreme reactions to separations, changes, and losses of all kinds. Libidinal and aggressive drives are deprived of the object necessary for their expression, stimulation, channeling, and regulation. Phase-specific fantasies come into conflict with drive remnants, perceptions, and memory traces still attached to the recently lost object.
The patients studied, four men and eight women, suffered from depression. In some the depression was masked by character traits, usually obsessive, or by a degree of ego disorganization. One man, whose father had died when he was three years old, complained of dizziness and vagueness, while at the same time he laughed with pleasure. Analysis revealed this to be a