Category: Orphancy & Archetype

Sometimes people give in to compulsions because they’re not finished living their wounds. This is called a repetition compulsion. Only a determined few eventually learn healthier, more functional, behaviors.

Patricia had never really wavered from her plan to give her baby up. Though at times she expressed typical motherly feelings toward her unborn son, more often she appeared indifferent. It was as if she was already carrying someone else’s child.

Instead of deep healing, the client performs a “slap-dash remodel” to appear functional. Still an orphan at heart, they avoid the work needed to stop perpetuating their childhood abandonment and loss.

To prevent the re-orphaning of the client, the analyst must refuse to become the ghost; holding the boundary that the original mother could not. Thus, the “wrong way” of habitual trauma is corrected by the “steady hand” of the conscious witness.

In dream work, the dreamer becomes the expert on her own dreams, rather than looking to the analyst to decode what belongs uniquely to her.

In the dream, she chased a cat through thick fog and twisting alleyways. No matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t catch it. The setting changed—white walls, grime, and something lurking just beyond sight. When she woke, her body remembered what her mind tried to forget.

Client and therapist meet as a single mother plans adoption, seeking psychotherapy for the emotional road ahead—and marking the beginning of a deeper journey.

Considering adoption for her son was a gift, not an abandonment—to give him a better life.

Knowledge isn’t enough. While resolving emotional wounds seems simple in theory, the path to healing is rarely linear. Through Patricia’s story and case study, we witness how long-standing patterns of abandonment finally come into view—and begin to shift—within the therapeutic relationship.