The Traumatic Loneliness of Children

The common, existing distance between children and adults is the basis of this work, which has been addressed in many literary and cultural works throughout history. Not being able to remember how we, now adults, thought as children—like their spontaneity or magic and omnipotent form of thinking—would leave children completely isolated, like a helpless immigrant in a foreign land. This book attempts to comprehend how parents’ misunderstanding can induce loneliness and helplessness in children that with time will become traumatic, and will remain unconsciously present in all of us forever. It will continue to repeat using infantile emotions, children forms of thinking and experiencing, loneliness, anxiety, depression, fears, and the chronic need of finding a ‘rescuer’ in the form of power, fame, drugs, money, religion, and so on. This very innovative approach to the understanding of children’s segregation and its repercussion on adult’s emotional life will be of invaluable interest to all practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and parents included.