This article is part of a series exploring the role of psychotherapy in addressing deep emotional wounds, particularly those rooted in early abandonment. Each installment follows one segment of a single, real-life case study, offering an intimate look at the challenges and breakthroughs that emerge in the course of therapeutic work. Through the unfolding story of Patricia, we witness how past pain can resurface—and begin to heal—when held within a safe and reflective space.
Though it’s taken a good two months to do it, I’ve completed Patricia’s case study; this post may be considered a sort of post-game wrap-up, a terminal staffing of Patricia’s case. Although Patricia is a composite, she is a reliable representation of real clients. I never worked with a surrendering birth mother who wasn’t devastated afterward, who didn’t regret it, and who didn’t long for her lost baby every day thereafter. Though some turned to addictions to numb their pain and thus mask it, the pain was always there. Though Patricia runs, she can never run far enough away from what she has done.
I had several clients like Patricia, clients who would never have given their children up for adoption had they been healthier or more beloved people, for when they gave up their babies they sealed themselves in a special kind of purgatory reserved for birth mothers. They made sure that they would be punished for the rest of their lives for being who they were, for the choices they had made.
By this, I don’t mean to say that no mother should ever outsource her parenting to another couple or that a birth mother’s pain must be eternal and unending. I am all in favor of adoption when parents won’t get their acts together or simply do not want to raise an accidental baby. Babies and small children get one childhood, and that childhood is short. If they don’t have healthy parents, children will be psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally maimed. All of us will pay the price.
This is why, I think, the Old Testament states that the father’s sins are revisited by the third and fourth generations. In family therapy, when we do a genogram, we can see how patterns are, in fact, continued through three or four generations. Absent a healing, wounds are transmitted as surely as DNA. And I know for certain that every person alive is eminently redeemable and able to receive healing.
I don’t mean to say that adoption is bad, that it causes an incurable wound. However, having one’s children removed to foster care and all child adoptions occur as the result of a fracture in the bones of a family. Breaks in relationship are symptoms. What caused the state intervention and child adoption generally are not good things. After having children themselves, even adult adopted people raised by the best possible adoptive parents say that they can’t imagine planning adoption for their own child. They say they would do whatever it takes to keep their children, and they do.
not merely about adoption
But Patricia’s story is not merely about adoption. It would be easy to dismiss her study because adoption isn’t part of our lives. We’re not so wounded that we’ve cast away our own flesh and blood, we think. We’re better than that.
I think we should not be so hasty to pat ourselves on the back, because to whatever extent you or I were wounded–complexed, tied up in knots–to that extent we too need healing and we too have passed on our wounds to our children. You’ll see it when your children grow up. You’ll see it in their friendships, the conflicts they have with others, in what they do with their success. You’ll see your errors in the way they treat you.
One of the best examples of applied case history I’ve written was in “Talisman,” where I showed how Amanda’s wound, “Trailer Trash,” manifested itself in her life despite her extensive efforts to do other than what her parents had done. In middle age, she is very much like her parents were. The addictions have been cleaned up and are socially acceptable, and the chaos she creates in her life is chaos in the name of Good, but the effects are the same. There’s no peace, no place of rest in her household, no order, no insight or wisdom, no true spirituality. Nobody really wants to linger at Amanda’s house.
I could give a hundred examples of the compulsion to repeat one’s patterns of woundedness, for I’ve seen it in every life of every walking wounded I know, including my own. We repeat until we’re free, as I wrote in “Talisman.” It can be as obvious as the adult child of the alcoholic marrying an alcoholic. It can be as subtle as the social worker who rationalizes her inhuman work schedule by saying she’s doing necessary work while ignoring the fact that her own children see her no more often than she saw her own parents, and are no more known by her than she was by her own unavailable mother.
repetition compulsion
Sometimes people whose families looked good enough from the outside, who had average or above-average opportunities but impoverished relationships, fare the worst. Stan and Anita grew up in such families. Each had a high-functioning addict or personality-disordered parent; each parent divorced and remarried one or more times, using all the energy that should have been given to the children for the new romance. The children attended summer camps and lived in nice homes. They attended good schools and universities, were members of fraternal societies and religious clubs. They were the pictures of success and ripe potential until they married and decided to have children. Then, though each continued to display outward success–good careers, nice home, good cars–they and their marriage began to fall apart.
The couple decided to live in a neighborhood where two halfway houses, numerous bars, and a drug house were within one square mile of their pretty Victorian home. They had chosen for their children a setting that was, in effect, what what had been given them by their own parents: The appearance of plenty surrounded by constant threats.
As those trying to help, we must accept that sometimes people give in to compulsions because they’re not finished living their wounds. This is called a repetition compulsion, and it’s what Patricia did. It’s what nearly every client does, at first. They do it in the most reliable ways. Only a determined few come back for more healing and eventually learn healthier, more functional, behaviors.
in session: tales of transformation
- Intro: An Introduction to Tales of Transformation
- In Session, Part 1: Considering Adoption
- In Session, Part 2: Client and Therapist Meet
- In Session, Part 3: Message in Blood
- In Session, Part 4: Dream Work
- In Session, Part 5: The Analyst is Analyzed
- In Session, Part 6: Deliverance
- In Session, Part 7: Disconnected
- In Session, Part 8: Termination
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This case study is based on real-life therapy work and reflects the emotional and psychological truths of the process. To protect the privacy of those involved, all names and identifying details have been changed.
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