Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2014, 59, 189–210

‘Who am I?’ Kristina Schellinski, Geneva Abstract: The dreams and existential questions of those, who came into being in order to replace a dead person, pivot around a central cry: ‘Who am I?’ If conceived, born or designated as a replacement child, such an individual may suffer—even as an adult—from a rarely recognized unconscious confusion of identity, compounded by grief and survivors’ guilt. From before the child is born, the archetypal forces of death and life are joined in a fateful constellation; the soul of the replacement child bears the shadow of death from the very beginning of life. Hope for the replacement child lies in an emergence of true self as soul recreates original life. Analysis can help the replacement child experience a ‘rebirth into true life’, not as ‘the one who returned’, but as a psychologically newborn individual; the path of individuation countering the replacement child‘s identification with the dead. Jungian analysis offers unique concepts for understanding and healing the replacement child; C.G. Jung himself was born after two stillborn babies and an infant that lived only five days. Key words: individuation, psychological rebirth, replacement child, survivor’s guilt, true self

Dreams and existential questions of replacement children What happens, psychologically speaking, to adults who were conceived or born to replace a family member who was killed, died or disappeared? They may suffer from a specific replacement child syndrome (A. Cain & B. Cain 1964, p. 454) or a handicap with important psychopathological risks (M. Porot 1993/1996, pp. 215–18). Too often neither the specific suffering (confusion of identity, survivor’s guilt, unprocessed grief) nor the source of suffering (memory of a dead child imposed onto another) are recognized, neither by the replacement child, nor by the parent nor the analyst. It takes looking squarely, deeply and long enough at the feelings of loss and despair after the death of a child, and envisaging the sometimes tragic consequences when a new child was conceived to cut short the grieving. For centuries, if not millennia, well-meaning doctors, counsellors and family members have tried to comfort and divert attention away from the inconsolable loss towards the hope of a new birth: ‘focus on life’, ‘give me a new child’, ‘make another one’. Unfortunately, this often condemned another human being to a life akin to death—destined to live the life of another human being whom she or he was not. 0021-8774/2014/5902/189

© 2014, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. DOI: 10.1111/1468-5922.12069

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If there may be existential difficulties encountered by an individual born in the wake of death, what are the consequences for society, in the wake of mass-scale death and destruction, after wars, genocide, mass murders and natural disasters? What are the consequences for the second and third generation survivors of the Second World War, of the Shoah, in Russia1 and in many countries around the world? World War II was the deadliest conflict in history with an estimated death toll of 62–78 million, some 27 million in the countries of the Soviet Union alone (A. Gareev and G. A. Hosking 2006, p. 242). Some survivors of natural or man-made disasters, and those born after the disaster to replace lost loved ones, as well as their descendants, show symptoms of a specific set of afflictions, weighing heavily on their relationships, their physical and psychological health, and their intra-psychic representations and archetypal images. These symptoms can range from low self-esteem to guilt feelings, relational difficulties and identity problems. They carry—often unconsciously—the image of persons long dead deep in their soul, sometimes for several generations. Carl Gustav Jung speaks in haunting terms of the importance of the legacy of the dead. These… are the dead, not just your dead, that is all the images of the shapes you took in the past, which your ongoing life has left behind, but also the thronging dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past, …I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through empty sockets of your eyes, who moan and hope to gather up through you all the loose ends of the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession. (Jung 2009, p. 296)

Many of those born after the Second World War and other conflicts and disasters, are replacement children; other individuals born after large-scale or individual losses may not suffer from the replacement child syndrome. Many factors intervene. On one side, it will depend on whether the parents intentionally conceived another child to replace one who died, and thus transferred life projects and the projection of identity traits from one being to another, and on whether feelings of guilt (parental guilt, survivor’s guilt) and grief (parental, sibling) were sufficiently processed before the new being came into the world so as not to burden the newborn. On the other side, it will depend on whether a conscious or unconscious identification between the lost and living human being has taken root in the psyche of the replacement child, via projection from parents, siblings or other family members, or by unconscious self-identification. While the symptoms might lead to diagnoses such as attachment disorders, depression (with suicidal impulses), personality disorder, even psychosis, the underlying existential questions addressing the issue of identity are: Who am I? 1

nd

This paper is based on an address by the author to the 2 European Conference of the IAAP, held in St. Petersburg on 31. 8. 2012. See also earlier research published in Proceedings of the XVI. IAAP Congress (Schellinski 2002, 2009).

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Why am I? Why am I alive, and the other is not? Am I somebody? Might it be that I am someone else? Questions like these arise in individuals who are born to become someone who no longer is. They are not born to be, they are born to be a dead person. Buried deep in the unconscious of the replacement child, the trained analyst can detect traces of a confounded identity, survivor’s guilt or un-evacuated grief. This phenomenon might occur even in the unconscious of succeeding generations. The suffering of the replacement child can be passed on from generation to generation: via the shared unconscious between mother and child, a transfer of self-representation, survivor’s guilt and feeling tones can take place; or via modes of relational patterns, communication or lack of communication as well as behavior, such as over-protection or neglect and endangerment; or via defense mechanisms such as denial or dissociation or projective identification. Whether the replacement child receives the projection of a dead revenant or of a resurrected golden miracle child, such projection may have a significant impact on personality development. Volkan & Ast (1997, p. 89) speak of ‘transgenerational transmission’ through the ‘deposits of preformed self or object representation(s)’. Prospects for healing require the recognition that the client is suffering from the replacement child syndrome. Jungian analysis is especially helpful when exploring the borderlands of life and death; it can offer understanding of the unique suffering of the replacement child. As analysts, we can assist an individual to step back from the abyss of non-being and find a path back to life, to a true re-birth into their own life rather than living a pseudo-life, as if resurrecting a dead other person. Some of the central concepts of analytical psychology reflect, in my view, the fact that Carl Gustav Jung was born after his mother mourned the stillbirth of two daughters and the death of a son who lived only five days.This information, first published by Bair (2004, p. 18), was confirmed to me in a personal communication by Andreas Jung, Jung’s grandson (letter dated 28 November 2008). His development of basic tenets of Analytical Psychology, such as the focus on individuation, the role of the self and his emphasis on striving for becoming ‘one’s own being’ (Jung 1965, p. 382) are striking. Jung wrote in none of the hitherto published works about the three lost siblings or the impact thereof on his life and theory; hence such a connection remains speculative. Whether or not analytical psychology takes root in traces relating to the replacement child syndrome, the application of Jung’s central concepts proves meaningful and healing to analysands suffering from this syndrome.

The replacement child: discovery, definition and research Discovery Psychoanalytic research on the specific trauma of the replacement child started with the treatment of survivors of the Shoah and their descendants. Streznzcka

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text (1945) and Papanek (1946) (cited in Porot, 1993/1996, p. 199) worked with children saved from the Nazi concentration camps. Cain & Cain published ‘On replacing a child’ (1964), a basic reference article for understanding the psychology of the replacement child, followed by works of Poznanski (1972), Sabbadini (1989) and Anisfeld and Richards (2000). French psychiatrist Porot, published after decades of research with survivors of tuberculosis, his book ‘L’enfant de remplacement’ (1993/1996).

Definition Cain & Cain define the replacement child as ‘a disturbed child who was conceived shortly after the death of another child, his parents’ specific intention being to have this child as a replacement or substitute for their child who died’ (Cain & Cain, 1964, p. 443). Porot defines the replacement child as any child born after the death of another child in as far as it is invested with parental expectations and fantasies which were once projected onto the deceased child (Porot 1993/1996, p. 171). I use a wider definition: it is any child who is conceived or born to replace a child who died, or who was born shortly after a death, stillbirth or abortion, or who ‘replaced’ a sibling or another member of the family later on, and whose role may have been reassigned to the ‘replacement child’. Jungian analyst Abramovitch (Tel-Aviv), whose research investigates the neglected subject of siblings in psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, writes: ‘A replacement child is a living child who comes to take the place of a dead one’ (Abramovitch 2013, p. 3). This can also apply to a child, who gets identified or self-identifies with a sibling that dies in the process of growing up together. Stolorow, Socarides and Stolorow (1987) describe a case of a 26-year young woman who suffered from a psychotic identification with her older brother who died when she was 14 years old. The parents desired to undo the death of the son by transferring his role to the remaining daughter, causing a ‘derailment of the developmental process of self-differentiation’ (p. 189). The surviving sister became psychotic and wanted to commit suicide so that her brother, who lived inside her, could live. The psychological consequences for a replacement child can be observed in adults and children, especially if the role of new child is to cut short the grief, to embody the role or take the place of a dead child or family member. If the child lives in his or her own right, and is neither identified nor self-identifies, even unconsciously, with a dead other, it may not suffer from the syndrome.

Archetypal perspective From a Jungian perspective, when we accompany a replacement child on the difficult path towards individuation, we must be aware of both the

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developmental and attachment difficulties and the underlying forces activated in the unconscious: such an individual is straddling the archetypal worlds of life, death and rebirth. Even from before the child is born, often from conception onwards, or when the bereaved parents’ fantasy first conceived of the thought of conception, death and life are conjured up together, joined in a fateful constellation. The soul of the replacement child may bear the imprint of the shadow of death from long before the very beginning of its own life and the replacement child may present—even later in adult life—some of the primary symptoms.

Replacement child research: primary symptoms Streznzcka (1945) and Papanek (1946) identified survivor’s guilt (quoted in Porot 1993/1996, p. 199) in those who survived after other members of family had perished in the Holocaust. Survivors and their children often had to fill the void of entire families replacing whole generations. Epstein (1979) presented their anguish and psychic pain in ‘Children of the Holocaust’ and Wardi found that certain children were designated as ‘memorial candles’, ‘given the burden of participating in his parents’ emotional world to a much greater extent than any of his brothers or sisters…serving as the link … (between) past,…present and the future’ (Wardi 1992, p. 6). Cain & Cain (1964) observed a sample of six replacement children at the University of Michigan Clinic who suffered from ‘moderate neuroses to (two) psychoses’ (p. 448). While observing in some of the mothers ‘pre-existent ‘phobo-genic’ ‘pre-morbid personalities’ and counselling ‘there can be basically intact, well-functioning children raised even against (such) backdrops’, Cain & Cain report a ‘sufficiently dramatic syndrome’ (ibid., p. 454) in replacement children. The authors identified ‘parents’ inadequate or unresolved mourning’ (ibid., p. 451), guilt feelings and the fact that ‘parents grossly imposed the identity of the dead child upon his substitute, and unconsciously identified the two’ (ibid., p. 446), leading to a pathological development and identification with the dead child. These children were born into a family atmosphere of depression and sorrow, the dead child lived on in ‘hyper-idealization’ due to the ‘parents’ intense narcissistic investment in the children who had died’ (ibid., p. 444). ‘These children’s identity problems (were such) they could barely breathe as individuals with their own characteristics and identity’ (ibid, p. 451).’ According to Porot (1993/1996, p. 12), the function of the replacement child is to comfort the grief of the parents over the loss of the dead child; its role is to replace the deceased. That leads to the core existential problem of the replacement child: a start in life akin to non-identity. I am not. I am other. Porot calls this a handicap (1993/1996, p. 12), which may or may not lead to pathology, but will have a profound effect on personality formation. Sabbadini sees the substitute child ‘treated more as the embodiment of a memory than as a person in its own right’ (1988, p. 530) leading to ‘dissociative

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ego forming processes’ (ibid., p. 522). In addition to harbouring survivor’s guilt, often unconsciously, and being burdened with unresolved parental mourning, the replacement child faces identity problems, as he or she may be identified with a deceased human being. Salvador Dali depicted such a state of being in his painting, Macbeth, a shocking but accurate illustration of what it means to be joined side by side with a hideous other. Dali knew that he was born as a replacement child. He said: I experienced death before living life…. My brother died…three years before I was born. His death plunged my father and mother into the depths of despair… And in my mother’s belly, I already felt their anguish. My fetus swam in—a kind of theft of affection… This dead brother, whose ghost welcomes me…

(Schützenberger quoted in Coles 2011, p. 28; see also Porot 1993/1996, p. 29) In fact, Dali was born 9 months and 10 days after his brother’s death; dates of birth and death are often erroneously remembered by replacement children; also Beethoven tried to put three years between him and the brother whom he replaced. The author of Macbeth, Shakespeare, was he a replacement child? Shakespeare was born in 1564, after two of his sisters, born in 1558 and 1562, had died in infancy. The theme of death often fascinates those born in the aftermath and raised in a ‘funereal’ (Cain & Cain, p. 446) atmosphere.

Famous replacement children—ways out of the dilemma? Porot (1993/1996) analysed the biographies of some fifty replacement children, of famous people from all walks of life. He describes three ways out of the dilemma for the replacement child: madness, creativity or—becoming a psychologist. I believe the latter choice may speak of the capacity to be in tune with one’s feelings, including guilt, grief and loss, learnt from the beginning of life. It may also attest a capacity for compassion and reflection, the deep interest of the replacement child in existential questions and the meaning of life. The particular ‘way out’ may be the individual’s choice of adaptation in face of the power of projection that came to bear upon the replacement child. Yet, the potential for rediscovery and expression of the innate life force stands to facilitate not adaptation but the conscious recognition of the replacement child’s constellation, a first but vital step towards a true rebirth into his or her own true life. I see therefore a fourth ‘way out’ of the dilemma for the replacement child, a Jungian way, facilitating a re-discovery of the original life force: the path of individuation with its looking to the deepest layers of psyche for the reasons for coming into existence and its reconnection to the life-giving force, the Self.

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Seth The first replacement child in occidental history, according to Scripture, is Seth, whom Eve conceived after Abel was slain by Cain. Eve said: ‘God has granted me other seed in place of Abel…’ (Genesis 4:25). God said to Cain: ‘The voice of your brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.’ (Genesis 4:10) There are many famous replacement children: King Solomon, Napoleon III, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), Salvador Dali, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Camille Claudel, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom), James Barrie (author of Peter Pan), Eugene O’Neill (author of Long Day’s Journey into Night); Marie Cardinal (author of Les Mots pour le dire, 1975); Françoise Dolto, André Green, Michael Balint.

Carl Gustav Jung Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875, after his mother Emilie mourned the deaths of three children: a daughter still born2 on July 19, 1870, a second daughter still born on April 3, 1872 and a son named Paul after his father, born on August 18, 1873 and who died five days later. In Jung’s works, there is no mention of the three dead siblings, his only living sister is mentioned only briefly in his autobiography. Yet, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1965) and The Red Book (2009) abound with references to sacrifice, death and dying. In his autobiography he writes: ‘It seems to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated’. He refers to ‘an unconscious suicidal urge, or…a fatal resistance to life in this world’, in his early life (Jung 1965, p. 9). He relates how one maid comes running and exclaims, “The fishermen have found a corpse, come down the Falls…”. And the young Jung exclaims: ‘I want to see the dead body at once’ (ibid., p. 7). Vincent van Gogh, experienced a similar fascination with a dead corpse, a drowned victim. According to Porot (1993/1996, p. 23) he is said to have forced the door of a house in order to see a child that had drowned. Vincent van Gogh is portrayed in detail by Porot (ibid.) as a replacement child; he was born on the same day, one year after his dead brother Vincent, and given the same first name and birth registration number. Jung, again: ‘And once there was a great flood. … Fourteen people were drowned. … When the water retreated, some of the corpses got stuck in the sand. When I was told about it, there was no holding me…’ (Jung 1965, p. 15). In The Red Book, Jung proclaims: ‘the dead will besiege you terribly to live your unlived life’ (Jung 2009, p. 308). And then, there is this unmistakable, unique urge of Jung to find out the core of one’s true being, the following written at the age of 2 A control study in 2001 found that children born after a stillbirth are at significant risk of ‘disorganized attachment behavior’ and ‘psychological and behavioral problems’ in later childhood (Hughes, Fonagy et al. 2001, p. 791).

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31 in Septem Sermones ad Mortuos: ‘Therefore not after difference, as ye think it, must ye strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING’ (Jung 1965, p. 382). Could Jung’s experience of personality number one and personality number two have to do with the fact that his life came into being after others had died, and that he was searching for his identity? Did Jung struggle to find his own identity amidst the ‘Ghosts in the Nursery’ (Fraiberg, 1975). When he was only seven years old he found a stone, his stone. Jung asked himself: Am I it or is it I? Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?’ (Jung 1965, p. 20). Sick with pseudo-croup, Jung had a vision of ‘a glowing blue circle …the size of the full moon, and inside it moved golden figures which I thought were angels’; this allayed his fears of suffocation, because ‘the atmosphere of the house was beginning to be unbreathable’ (ibid., pp. 18–19). Cain & Cain had observed how the replacement child’s ‘identity problems (were such) they could barely breathe as individuals with their own characteristics and identity’ (Cain & Cain 1964, p. 451). When Jung had placed a little manikin together with an oblong blackish stone from the Rhine, ‘his stone’ in a pencil case, hidden up in the forbidden attic, he said: ‘I felt safe, and the tormenting sense of being at odds with myself was gone’ (Jung 1965, p. 21). He said: ‘I know only that I am without knowing what I am’ (Jung 2009, p. 304). Was it in the process of looking for who he was that he searched for the inalienable part in himself, and that he found the self-healing quality of the psyche? The Self? In light of the research on the replacement child, some of Jung’s works can be read, not only but also, in the context of a replacement child searching to find back to its original life by way of individuation, where an ‘I’ may be resurrecting through and from the ‘Self’. With that concept, Jung is lending a virtual but vital helping hand to replacement children around the world.

Mother and child attachment research Being born after a loss can have a significant impact on the bonding process. Grief and sadness may impair a mother’s attachment to her other living children and/or to a new child, with consequences for attachment patterns and relational capacity. The replacement child often perceives a grieving mother as an absent mother. An absent mother is, intra-psychically, seen as a ‘dead mother’ (Green 1983/2011). The attachment patterns of such individuals reveal feelings of extreme ambivalence; rejection or ‘clinging’ and periods of severe regression, throughout the life span, may occur, as the following example illustrates.

Delphine: if she does not return, I cannot exist When Delphine came to consultation, the question of ‘who am I?’ had become pressing; she was approaching her seventies. All she knew was: ‘I am the one

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who cries’, because that is what she had been told. She was born one year after a stillborn sister whose two first names had been ‘distributed’ to her and a sister born three years after her. She would have wished to have her name changed to Delphine, a new first name for an unencumbered identity—that is why I choose this name as a pseudonym for her. Delphine says she was close, ‘maybe too close’ to her mother. In fact, she would not let go of her, ever. When she was seven years old, her mother had left by train for a day’s journey. At night, Delphine went to fetch her at the station but when the train arrived, there was no mother; mother had missed that train. Sixty-three years later she remembers: ‘It was as if I had died. I ran home, sat down next to the oven for warmth, and cried and cried. I thought: if she does not return, I cannot exist.’ ‘Unfortunately, there is proof how the loss of a baby can lead to grave problems later on…’ (Bowlby 1980/ Bowlby 1991, p. 161). Bowlby writes: if the full personal identity of a lost person is ascribed to another human being, then this is a potentially dangerous matter and far-reaching distortions of (patterns of) attachment will invariably ensue. This is especially serious if the individual concerned is a child. (ibid., p. 211)

Delphine’s words ‘if she does not return, I cannot exist’ express the existential anguish of a replacement child who needs the ‘other’ or else she ceases to exist. Yet, the other is absent. This can refer as much to the psychologically absent, grieving mother, as it can refer to an existential double bind: Delphine, cannot exist, for as long as the stillborn sister, does not return. In responding to the dead girl’s first name that she has been given as a hand-me-down, she has become, at least in part, via projection and/or identification that person. To the degree that her mother has not been able to mourn the lost child, Delphine will be carrying for her mother the grief, and she will end up feeling more dead than alive. This may also mirror the representations and feelings of the mother who may need the dead child to return in the newborn, or else she ceases to exist. Mother and daughter are linked in an existential double bind linking death and birth with existential guilt. The absent ‘other’, as in sibling or as in mother, may lead to an inner representation of a void, with consequences for relational patterns and the representation of the wholly ‘Other’, the transcendental or divine, either blocking it out in blackness or leading to an identification with a resurrecting deity. Van Gogh, in a painting of the Pieta, substituted his own facial features for those of Christ. Volkan and Ast speak of dead sibling representations leading to so-called ‘Easter or Christmas Neuroses’ (p. 123, p. 161). In the case of Jung, I believe he was led to a search for the inalienable life force and the ‘wholly Other’ within. When Delphine’s mother dies decades later, her feelings of guilt and ambivalence are palpable: ‘I wanted that she dies and that she lives. I feel as if I were responsible for her death.’ Green describes how an infant or young child experiences a grieving mother as a ‘hole’ (Green 2011, p. 246) leading to an image of mother being ‘psychically dead in the eyes of the young child in her care’ (ibid., p. 233). The child

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becomes entombed with the mother and the only way for it to come ‘alive’ is to mirror-identify with the ‘hole’ where the mother had once been (ibid., p. 242). This leads not only to ‘a loss of the experience of love, but also to the loss of meaning’ in life (ibid., p. 241).

Antidote Self If the soul of a replacement child is poisoned in such a way, what can we do? What force can possibly come to the rescue and fill up such a hole? I believe it is the Self, the central archetype for Jung, expressing the ‘wholeness of the personality’ (Jung 1965, p. 196)—‘the Self (which) is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning’ (ibid., p. 199f). Delphine had this life force in her; she was able to dis-cover, as if from underneath the ashes of the ‘dead other’, a feeling of self; she developed an interest in painting which led her to express figures and forms hidden long ago in the deeper layers of her being of which she could now begin to discern the significance. She also had some experiences of ‘light’; this frightened her, though; she thought she was going crazy when she saw a white light pass at the hour of night when one of her brothers died. Her other sister, also a replacement child, being more matter of fact, requested of the brother, who had been a priest, to answer her question: ‘where are you now?’. Delphine described other rare times when she found herself wrapped in a kind of white light. The analytical notion of self and its vital functions helped her to welcome such a numinous experience rather than be frightened by it. I conceive of these as rare moments of an image of self, when ‘The self compensates effectively chaos’ (Jung 1969, para. 444). After years of analysis, Delphine was beginning to understand who she is—minus the identification with a dead sibling and a grieving mother. Where no other figure has taken up the role of mirroring and containing the newborn thus helping the child develop an image of self and other, then the self, the centre of personality, on an archetypal level the Self with capital ‘Self’, capable of constellating spirit—can come to the rescue. What happens if neither the Self with big ‘S’ nor with small ‘s’ should constellate in such cases? Could this lead to physical and/or psychic destruction? I have seen in replacement children both outcomes…the self being reconstructed out of the Self—or the destructive filling the ‘hole’.

Transgenerational transmission research: Elements of the replacement child syndrome can be transmitted trans-generationally. Up to four generations after the initial loss, echoes of the initial trauma can still be heard in the consulting room. Images related to the long ago lost child as well as

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archetypal images evoking the themes of life, death and resurrection can be recognized in practice, as can be symptoms of the initial attachment disorder, un-evacuated grief and guilt complexes of the parent, grand-parent or great-grandparent. Jung wrote: I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. (Jung 1965, p. 233)

Andreas Jung recalled that Jung’s maternal grandmother Augusta (aged 18) ‘lay apparently dead for thirty-six hours. As she was to be placed in her coffin, her mother brought her back to life with a hot flat iron!’ (A. Jung 2011, p. 659). The replacement child syndrome, as well as its echoes across generations, can be recognized in dreams or real life, in situations where the replacement child or its descendants puts their lives at risk, intentionally or unconsciously. It can also give rise to a dynamic force which drives towards a discovery of the self, as I speculate was the case with Jung. Trauma theory explains how trauma can be transmitted from generation to generation, how unwanted contents, especially negative affects, can be transferred from parent to child. Amongst the mechanisms of transmission, there are the unconscious process of identification with another subject (acting/being as if one were the other) and the defence mechanism of projective identification. Identification with a living other, especially if lasting lifelong can become a danger for personality development; it precludes by definition individuation. Identification with a dead person may amount to a life-endangering imprisonment. Research with survivors of the Shoah and their children found that: The shock of realizing that the Holocaust had traumatized adult minds in ways that had never been seen before was compounded by the realization that the children of survivors were also traumatized… (with) a general reluctance to accept that a trauma might … damage the second and even the third generation. (Coles 2011, p. 74)

Trans-generational transmission of trauma may be found among descendants, in some cases ‘death-scendants’, of victims, witnesses and perpetrators of mass death and destruction or individual loss. Replacement children of the first, second and third generation face serious, potentially life-endangering consequences if their condition remains unrecognized, as in the following case. Caroline: at risk of unconscious repetition Caroline, of German descent, came to consultation because she had difficulties in her relationships at work and with her boyfriend; an insisting inner voice told her ‘I must sacrifice myself’.

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When Caroline was born, she was not expected to live. She was told: ‘One had to come and get her…’. Later on, these words would acquire a terrible meaning. But so far, the explanation was that her mother had expected twins; sadly, the twin brother of Caroline had died at eight months, in utero. I thought of a possible replacement child diagnosis, the mother having grieved the lost, other child, my client having ambivalent feelings due to impaired attachment, plus a possible guilt complex urging her to sacrifice herself, possibly in connection with identification with the lost twin. In this case, there was something else. In the countertransference, I felt something uncanny, terribly frightening and cold, that I could not put into words or get otherwise hold of. She said that she could neither feel, nor cry, nor make any decision. Mom, she relates, sees her as weak, that she might die any moment. Dad says: ‘You must be strong’. I feel rather a ‘nothingness’ in her presence. Being German-born myself, I notice the strong-weak dynamic, and am reminded of catastrophic consequences during the Third Reich when the weaker pole of this pair of opposites was transferred to millions and millions of ‘others’, making them the victim. Wanting to encourage her to be herself, to feel what she feels, to think what she thinks, I reply and repeat this message throughout the analysis: ‘You are you. Period’. She, for now, doubts, ‘But how can I feel what I feel if I do not know who I am?’ We concentrate on dreams. Caroline dreams repeatedly that she commits suicide, senselessly, ‘as if to be sacrificed’. She dreams: ‘Someone rings at the door, a man white like paper. Nothingness. I am surprised, I panic’. She dreams that she is to be murdered. ‘It is surreal’, she says. She is afraid of the void, the ‘nothingness out there’. She is afraid to go crazy, even to go home. ‘There is something very deadly’, she says, ‘someone wants something that I cannot give, I cannot do’. She dreams of a terribly distorted man, sees a man with a blood-smeared mask and feels total panic. ‘Someone is killed, but we escape…’. She shudders: ‘I know, I have the devil in me!’ Since primary school, she felt this destructive force in her, as if it had come from a past life. Then she dreams a teacher takes her through empty big halls, offices with no windows… She sees the biggest meat-hook in the world…torndown buildings. In the countertransference, I feel the utter destruction in the wake of Nazi crimes. I have an urgent need for boundaries against violent intrusiveness, against deadly transgression. In the next dream she faces guilt: ‘A girl rides a pure breed; around her is barbed wire…’. She is being shouted at. For the first time, she shouts back: ‘I am not guilty!’ This is progress, I think, she is angry and fights back. She notices: ‘I always felt guilty, so much so that I deserve to die for it!’ I reflect: ‘Guilty of what?’ Caroline says into the silence: ‘I am supposed to find out who did it! To punish him’. A series of 22 dreams led us to imagine that a family secret was causing her anguish. Caroline went home to ask her elderly father some questions. Caroline is told that she had a Jewish great-grandmother, the mother of her paternal

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grandmother, and that this great-grandmother had killed herself to save the rest of the family from arrest; she did so, supposedly, just as the boots of the Nazi murderers could be heard approaching on the gravelled path outside the house… More than 60 years later, we could feel in the consulting room the abysmal terror of choice before Caroline’s great-grandmother: murder by the Nazis or suicide, a terror harboured in the unconscious of Caroline, which her dreams urged her to re-enact. Now, the words of Caroline, describing her birth, echoed tragically her great-grandmothers’ death: ‘One had to come and get me!’ Her recurring dreams telling her: ‘I am to be sacrificed’ acquired meaning, connecting her and her great-grandmother by an invisible thread now rendered conscious. The father whose grandmother had died tragically under these circumstances, what did he experience when he expected two children to be born, but one died, and only one lived? One strong, the other sacrificed? What unconscious connection had gone back and forth between the respective unconscious of my client and her parents? Caroline, a first generation replacement child (for the lost twin) and a third-generation replacement child (for the great-grandmother said to have ‘sacrificed’ herself) had been urged in her dreams ‘to sacrifice’ herself, some 60 years later. Had she been at risk of an unconscious repetition? Had she identified with her great-grandmother, or had she received a projection that she was like her great-grandmother? Did her dreams lead her to the discovery of this secret and into the way towards herself? In what mysterious ways were she and her great-grandmother linked? I do not know. But having discovered what had been unconsciously weighing on her soul, all her life, Caroline said: ‘I no longer want to be someone else. This insight contained all Caroline could hope for, to try to re-find her own life, to actually feel and cry and reconnect with herself. The self, was in my view the agency that had ‘sent’ her the dreams, in order for her to find out. Coles writes ‘no traumatic experience…can remain hidden without it having destructive consequences upon later generations’. Madness can result if it is not acknowledged, especially when ‘the subjects of historical truth (are) cut off from history’ (Coles 2011, pp. 32–33).

Understanding and healing the replacement child The lifelong challenge for the replacement child is to be or not to be. How can we help a replacement child to get from a potential non-identity due to identification with a deceased to the life-fulfilling path of individuation, an experience of self? Jung’s answer is: ‘The psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious’ which is ‘the central concept of my psychology: the process of individuation’ (Jung 1965, p. 209). He writes that ‘individuation’ denotes a process by which a person becomes ’in-dividual’, that is a separate indivisible unity or ‘whole’ (Jung 1959, para. 490).

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As Jungian analysts, we offer the replacement child accompaniment on the path of individuation that can serve as an antidote against the replacement child‘s identification with the dead. In this process, the replacement child can come to discover the ‘I’ as an emanation of ‘Self’ instead of being conceived as a ‘reincarnation’ of a ‘dead other’. Where neither a developed ego nor an established link to the self may be at hand for the further development of the individual—but rather a false self with perfidious pervasiveness—we can assist the replacement child in two ways. We can help strengthen the ego and look out for stirrings of the self in the soul. As we approach the deeper lying identity problems, we may discover a structural vulnerability. One client dreamt her personality structure as an infinite number of drying racks stacked one on top of the other; she, as tiny infant on top. In such cases, identity may—intermittently—collapse, get lost or become merged with the other. Helping adult replacement children reclaim their individual identity with the aid of unconscious self energies emerging, is like walking on a tightrope over an abyss; the ego-identity needs enough strengthening before the archetypal Self energies can be discovered and contained. One client dreamt of the cosmic egg and identified with the ‘all-creative source’, at a stage in the process before he had built up a strong enough ego-identity of his own; he suffered a brief psychotic episode. Yet, I see the healing potential for the replacement child in a re-connection to the Self—Jung called it ‘the monad which I am’ (Jung 1965, p. 196). Such emergence of Self can be experienced as a rebirth into true life, not as the one who returned, but as a psychologically newborn individual.

Countertransference In the work with a replacement child—child or adult—the transference may be intense. The replacement child may not wish to leave the analyst, as if locked onto the analyst’s eyes, just as the mother may not have left the new child out of her eyesight for fear that this one should die, too. Or the relationship may feel hollow, inauthentic, as the bond between mother and child was not between the newborn and mother, but with a dead being who was vicariously kept alive through the newborn, who remained essentially unseen. The countertransfer may mirror the ‘hostile-dependent tie of the mutually ambivalent mother and child’ (Cain & Cain 1964, p. 229), as a replay of the hateful relationship towards a child wanted yet it is not the wanted child. The analyst needs to hold out hope for inklings, slight sightings of stirrings of the self in dreams, synchronistic events, fantasies, any symbolic expressions with a speck of individuality. Even if there seems to be no ‘breath of life’ in the analysand, the analyst can imagine rekindling the fire of life. Recognizing the specific dilemma of the replacement child, the analyst can help unearth the true ‘I’ from under a heap of projective identifications and introjects, and help the client connect it to the true self.

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Hope for redemption of the suffering of the replacement child lies in a faint memory of originality, once lost but which is inalienably there and which may act later on in life as a motor for development towards individuation, leading to an emergence of the true self, as soul recreates original life. Images surface in dreams, warnings may come via dangerous acting out, as in the case of Caroline, and creative processes help in the raising consciousness as in the case of Delphine. On the path towards individuation, the replacement child will likely address unconscious survivor’s guilt.

From unconscious survivor’s guilt to conscious compassion Sibling loss is a potential organizer of unconscious guilt arising from three sources; guilt is a diabolical factor making it difficult for the replacement child to have a symbolic experience of Self and reaching self-identity and self-determination. 1) The question ‘Why do I live and not the other child?’ leads to the next: ‘Do I live because the other has died?’. Such unconscious guilt may amount to the feeling: ‘I am responsible for the death of the other, I have murdered the other’. Some parents do reason: ‘since the new child is alive instead of our dead child, he has taken his place. This child is not our dead child…, it is his fault he is not. It isn’t fair that he should live and our other child die…’ (Cain & Cain 1964, p. 448) 2) Guilt-laden inexpressible rage (is also) aroused in the substitute child by incessant comparison with his invincible dead rival’ (ibid., p. 448). 3) From a Jungian perspective, I would add that guilt may also arise when the ‘I’ is not truly ‘I’—guilt from living in a state of self-alienation, a sense of guilt towards one’s own self realization. The case of Miriam illustrates how a ‘behind the scenes’ working self can help transform unconscious guilt into compassion.

Miriam: from unconscious guilt to compassion Miriam’s question in the first hour of analysis and for many hours to come, is: ‘Who am I?’ She says she has a problem of ‘identification, of non-identification really’. ‘Roots’, just the word, brings tears to her eyes. Why? Her Jewish father, living in Poland in the 1930s, had managed to escape death in the concentration camps. With two of his brothers, he survived, sheltered and hidden by Catholic Poles throughout the Second World War. But, five of his siblings, his parents, his wife and his first child, a girl 3–4 years old, were murdered in the death camps.

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After the war, her father emigrated and married again, a woman who was also a survivor of the Shoah, and who was to become Miriam’s mother. Initially, his wife did not want any children. Miriam says: ‘It is by sheer chance that I am alive’. Her mother’s girlfriend insisted she get pregnant. When Miriam was five years old, her mother asked her: ‘Do you want a little sister or brother?’ She said ‘no’. The mother aborted the foetus, also because she did not want to re-experience the pain she had suffered due to an ulcer, when expecting Miriam. Before Miriam was born, the Nazis had murdered nine members of the immediate family; after her, there was a sibling who was not to be. Her first mandalas contain amorphous cells, lines that cross and seem to lead nowhere, a faceless mouth that screams. She works very seriously with her dreams, but it is her writing which leads her out of ‘non-being’, into her own life. She writes that for most of her life, she served others, be it her father, her mother, her lovers, her husband or even friends. Was she not herself, but rather ‘another’ human being? Her father used to dote on her by calling her by the nick-name of his first daughter…But who was she, Miriam? What did she want to do in life? At fifty, she felt guilty because she could not answer that question. At one point she dreams ‘the maid is leaving!’. She realizes ‘I used to seek out men who were artists’. ‘Now’, she exclaims: ‘I want to become creative!’. She starts by publishing her story, because ‘that is when I can touch the self!’ She says: ‘I am in a process of self-construction’. One prize-winning story marks the turning point of connecting her with herself, transcending unconscious survivor’s guilt, awakening her to fully conscious compassion for herself, and the lives lost before, allowing her to grieve deeply. One day, when walking through the streets of Jerusalem she eats dates, tastes them, feels them, they remind her of seeds, and she vows to preserve all the pits, piling them in a glass jar. She writes: They lay one upon the other as naked, undernourished bodies, huddled together unable to protect themselves from certain death. A growing mound of tiny bodies shrunk by time gradually fills the empty space of eternity; reminding me to always remember my ancestors’ souls buried in a pit. Dateless pits, containing my flesh, containing my bones.

Miriam has renounced having a child. ‘It would hurt too much’, she says.

Facing the murderous shadow and the missing ‘other’ On the path towards individuation, the replacement child will likely face the shadow and seek to discover a living rather than dead image of an anima/animus within, a doubly difficult task for those born after another has died. Where there was a presence there is now a gaping absence. The first inner representation of ‘other’ is one of ‘missing other’, ‘absent other’, the dead sibling or as Green noted, the ‘dead mother‘ (Green 2011, p. 233).

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On one level, the shadow is the dead other child. That which s/he is not—yet is part of him or her. On another level, the confrontation with the shadow might mean coming face to face with a shattering, deeply unconscious shadow of the murderer, as the replacement child may be made to feel responsible for the death of the other who disappeared even before the replacement child was born. To render such projections conscious is not an easy task, nor to transform such deadly energies. Paradoxically, in order for the replacement child to live his or her own life, the replacement child must ‘kill’ the dead (Couvez 1979, cited in Porot 1993/1996, p. 125), the phantom identity of the dead sibling within him or herself. The killing is, of course, a symbolic endeavour.

The case of Anton: meeting the murderous shadow I worked with a 20-year young man, who suffered from a grave depression and a dependent personality disorder. He self-mutilated his arms with a knife, and had murderous fantasies with regard to his mother, sister and ex-girlfriend. One day, he thought of going out of my office and killing the people in a park nearby. ‘Why?’ I asked, alarmed. ‘Thus they do not have to live their life, like I must live mine…’ ‘And those who would mourn those killed?’ I wanted to know. ‘Then I would no longer be alone with my suffering’, he said. Afraid he might act out his fantasy, I asked him to sign a contract, that he would neither kill himself nor another person. That night, Anton dreamt that his entire body was dissolving, starting with his hand; it became one green and red mass, which flowed toward the earth until nothing of him remained. His alarming fantasy as well as this dream image made me ask him about the circumstances of his birth, about which he knew nothing. I suggested that he ask his mother. He then learnt that before him a much longed for female child had died at the eighth month of pregnancy. Her first name was given to his sister, born seven years after him. Anton had to come to the painful conclusion that he, who had been born in between, was doubly unwanted. Playing video games of the type ‘murderer or double agent’ had left him turning in circles. His true aggression and murderous fantasies were directed at the sister who did not exist and at the sister who did exist, as well as towards his mother—with imaginable consequences for his relationship to his girlfriend. With such a profound sense of non-identity rooted in the non-being of another who had died, unconscious aggression is likely to manifest. As long as it stays unconscious, such aggression is at serious risk of being turned against oneself or another, in depression, with suicidal tendencies, homicidal urges, forms of auto-aggression, or a deadly lack of self-esteem, seeking mutilation or death, unconsciously.

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In working with many replacement children, I have come to ponder whether a self might put at risk an ego that does not incarnate it. In some cases, being born a replacement child is akin to soul murder, a soul murder that may in turn make many victims. If many were to be affected because of war, strife or natural catastrophe, what would be the collective significance, for society? Is this how death and destruction may feed on itself? How do wars make victims long after the war is over? The dead, if replaced instead of mourned, may return to haunt manifold. I see a vital role for the analyst: Understanding the replacement child and his or her descendants, means helping those individuals find a livable path back towards discovering the self and living their own life. If the analyst can experience the inner terror of a replacement child, this in-express-able not-me feeling, of not intimating the self, of not being in relation with self nor with the other, the analyst can help the replacement child to become conscious. This could help avoid fantasizing of acting out the murderous shadow, such as in the case of Anton. Therapy and analysis can also help a replacement child to become conscious of these unconscious dynamics before conceiving a child and transmitting such contents.

Post tenebras lux—the gift of consciousness The replacement child, who is aware of the circumstances surrounding its birth, and faces the powers of death and destruction, can become a beacon of life. The Vietnamese Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh, whose mother lost a pregnancy before he was conceived, sees it this way: Often in my childhood I have asked myself if this baby was my brother or whether he was in me. If this baby did not come, it means the conditions were not right that he manifest himself and that the child decided to withdraw and wait for more favourable conditions… We must respect that will. Seeing the world with these eyes, you will suffer less. (Thich Nhat Hanh, 2003, p. 12)

The replacement child may experience such enlightenment, some at an early age when the ego cannot yet consciously behold ‘it’. The replacement child may have this ‘uncanny’ feeling of a ‘double’ (Sabbadini 1988, p. 520). One client said: ‘I have one foot here in life, and one foot, there—in eternity’. Another may experience the ‘light’ like Delphine or have the gift of ‘second sight’ like Jung’s maternal grandmother ‘Gustele’, a gift, Jung said, also present in his eldest daughter (Jung 1965, p. 231). Jungian Analysis serves to help the replacement child to consciously encounter the dark forces and to recognize the light. With all the darkness inherent in facing the deadly abyss, when the analyst may be made to feel as non-existent as the replacement child client, the analyst can also expect to partake in the experience of the light, as the Self can be glimpsed engendering true new life. It is an opportunity to relate first-hand to an experience of the creative, to witness life after death for the replacement child.

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Conclusion Through analysis, there is hope to recognize and treat the replacement child. The work of Carl Gustav Jung gave us the gift of the laboriously worked through psychological understanding of that dynamic force of transformation, the self-healing quality of the psyche which in the case of the replacement child can be literally self-resurrecting. The self may initiate a development towards creation, re-creation, re-birth, lifting the individual out of the ash-like existence of being covered by a dead other, and raising it from the dead, psychologically speaking. This amounts to the ‘all of life’ in the face of the ‘void of death’ of the other who came and left… leaving the replacement child in existential doubt as to his or her own life. Jung advised: ‘you grow if you stand still in the greatest doubt, and therefore steadfastness in great doubt is a veritable flower of life’ (Jung 2009, p. 306). The concepts of analytical psychology help chart a path towards life and consciousness, especially when working with those born in the wake of death and destruction. It is a path of resurrection of the true self through individuation, finding the ‘missing other’ within and facing the shadow, meeting unconscious guilt with the help of conscious compassion, and transcending the status of replacement child towards a rebirth of true life.

TRANSLATIONS

OF

ABSTRACT

Les rêves et les questions existentielles de ceux qui sont nés pour remplacer un mort tournent autour d’un cri central: Qui suis-je ? S’ils sont conçus, s’ils naissent ou s’ils sont désignés comme enfant de remplacement, ils peuvent souffrir – même à l’âge adulte – d’une confusion d’identité inconsciente et rarement reconnue, composée de chagrin et de culpabilité du survivant. Avant même que l’enfant soit né, les forces archétypiques de mort et de vie se rejoignent dans une constellation fatidique; l’âme de l’enfant de remplacement porte l’ombre de la mort dès le tout début de la vie. Pour l’enfant de remplacement, l’espoir repose surl’émergence d’un soi veritable tandis que l’âme recrée la vie originelle. L’analyse peut aider l’enfant de remplacement à faire l’expérience d’une « renaissance dans la vraie vie », non pas comme « celui qui estrevenu, » mais comme un sujet nouvellement né psychiquement ; car le chemin d’individuation s’oppose à l’identification avec le mort. Sur un plan préventif, les parents endeuillés devraient être informés des risques de concevoir un enfant pour remplacer un enfant perdu. L’analyse jungienne propose des concepts uniques pour la compréhension et le soin d’un enfant de remplacement; C. G. Jung lui-même est né après deux enfants mort-nés et un bébé qui n’a vécu que cinq jours.

Die Träume und existentiellen Fragen derer, die mit dem Auftrag ins Leben traten, eine verstorbene Person zu ersetzen, oszillieren um einen zentralen Ausruf: wer bin ich? Wenn ein Individuum als Ersatzkind empfangen, geboren oder später zu einem solchen bestimmt wird, kann es – sogar als Erwachsener – an einer selten erkannten Identitätskonfusion leiden, verbunden mit Trauer und den Schuldgefühlen eines

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Überlebenden. Schon vor der Geburt eines Kindes vereinigen sich dann die archetypischen Mächte von Tod und Leben in einer schicksalhaften Konstellation; die Seele des Ersatzkindes trägt den Schatten des Todes vom allerersten Beginn des Lebens. Hoffnung für das Ersatzkind besteht in der Emergenz des wahren Selbst, so die Seele das originäre Leben regeneriert. Die Analyse kann dem Ersatzkind dabei helfen, die Erfahrung einer ’Wiedergeburt in das eigene wahre Leben’ zu machen, nicht als ’der Andere, der zurückgekehrt ist’, aber als psychologisch neugeborenes Individuum; der Individuationsweg als lebensrettende Alternative zur Identifikation des Ersatzkindes mit dem Verstorbenen. Zur Vorbeugung sollten trauernde Eltern über die Risiken informiert werden die entstehen, wenn ein Kind empfangen wird um ein verlorenes zu ersetzen. Jungianische Analyse bietet einzigartige Konzepte zum Verständnis und zur Heilung des Ersetzungskindes; C.G. Jung selbst kam zur Welt nach zwei totgeborenen Schwestern und einem Bruder, der nur fünf Tage am Leben blieb.

I sogni e i problemi esistenziali di coloro che vennero al mondo per rimpiazzare una persona morta ruotano intorno a un grido centrale: Chi sono io? Se concepito, nato o designato come un bambino in sostituzione, un tale individuo può soffrire- anche da adulto- di una inconscia confusione di identità raramente riconosciuta, composta da angoscia e senso di colpa del sopravvissuto. Già da prima che il bambino sia nato, le forze archetipiche di vita e di morte si congiungono in una costellazione fatale: l’anima del bambino di sostituzione porta l’ombra della morte fin dal primo inizio della vita. Per il bambino in sostituzione la speranza giace nell’emergere di un sé autentico mentre l’anima ricrea la vita originale. L’analisi può aiutare il bambino in sostituzione a fare esperienza di “un rinascita nella vera vita”, non come “quello che è tornato”, ma come un individuo psicologicamente nato; il sentiero dell’individuazione che contrasta l’identificazione con la morte del bambino in sostituzione. Come prevenzione i genitori in lutto dovrebbero essere informati dei rischi quando concepiscono un bambino per sostituirne uno perduto. L’analisi junghiana offer concetti unici per comprendere e curare il bambino di sostituzione. Lo stesso Jung nacque dopo due bambini nati morti e dopo un neonato che visse solo cinque giorni.

Сны и экзистенциальные вопросы тех, кто появился на свет, замещая собой умершего человека, вращаются вокруг центрального крика: «Кто я?» Если ребенок зачат, рожден или предназначен быть замещающим ребенком, то такой индивидуум может страдать – даже будучи уже взрослым – от редко признаваемой бессознательной путаницы с идентичностью, соединенной с горем и виной выжившего. Еще до того, как ребенок родился, архетипические силы жизни и смерти соединились в роковой констелляции; душа замещающего ребенка несет на себе тень смерти с самого начала жизни. Надежда для такого ребенка лежит в проявлении подлинной самости по мере того, как душа воссоздает новую, исконную жизнь. Анализ может помочь замещающему ребенку пережить «возрождение к подлинной жизни», не в качестве «того, кто вернулся», но в качестве психологически новорожденного индивидуума; путь индивидуации противостоит идентификации замещающего ребенка с мертвым. В качестве предостережения родители, все еще находящиеся в горе, должны быть проинформированы о рисках зачатия ребенка, предназначенного заменить собой

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потерянного. Юнганский анализ предлагает уникальную концепцию для понимания и исцеления замещающего ребенка; сам К.Г.Юнг был рожден после двух мертворожденных младенцев и одного, прожившего не больше пяти дней.

Los sueños y preguntas existenciales de los que surgen por la necesidad de sustituir una persona muerta, pivotan en torno a un grito: ¿quién soy yo? Si se la concibe, nacido o designada como una sustitución del niño, esa persona puede sufrir incluso en la edad adulta de una rara confusión inconsciente de la identidad, a la que se suman el dolor, y la culpa de los supervivientes. Desde antes de que el niño haya nacido, el fuerzas arquetípicas de la muerte y la vida se unen en una fatídica constelación; el alma del niño sustituto lleva la sombra de la muerte desde el comienzo de suvida. La esperanza para la sustitución niño radica en la aparición de una verdadera alma libre que recrea vida original. El análisis puede ayudar a que el niño sustituto experimente un ‘renacimiento a la verdadera vida’, y no como "el uno que volvió"’, sino como una persona psicológicamente recién nacida; el camino de individuación contrarresta la sustitución de identidad con los muertos. Para la prevención, el duelo de los padres estos deben estar informados de los riesgos al engendrar un hijo para sustituir a uno perdido. El análisis Junguian ofrece conceptos únicos para la comprensión y la sanación de los niños sustitutos; C. G. Jung mismo nació después de dos los niños nacidos muertos y un bebé que sólo vivió cinco días.

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