In this episode, Mary Adams delve into issues related to the trauma of being a replacement child. She illustrates this with the example of James Joyce, as "he seemed to overcome the debilitating effects of this early trauma and survivor guilt by using his writing". 

Mary Adams is a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytic Association, having completed her training in 1996.  She was a training analyst with the Association of Child Psychotherapists, has a particular interest in the work of Donald Meltzer and has written several papers using his ideas.  She is a past editor of the Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapy. Her book on James Joyce as a replacement child was published by Routledge in 2022.

Link to the paper https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-hL8XbcupQQXAwbwh4ow4hQkBwccIyTo/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=112457875385152358388&rtpof=true&sd=true

Further reading on the Replacement Child:

Anisfeld, L., & Richards, A. D. (2000). The replacement child: Variations on a theme in history and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 55: 301–318.

Capps, D. (2012).  The Replacement Child: Solomonic Justice and the Sublimation of Sibling Envy   American Imago, 69(3): 385-400

Pollock, G. H. (1972). Bertha Pappenheim's Pathological Mourning: Possible Effects of Childhood Sibling Loss. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 20:476-493

Pollock, G. H. (1978). On Siblings, Childhood Sibling Loss, and Creativity. Annual of Psychoanalysis 6:443-481

Reid, M. (1992). ‘Joshua — Life after death. The replacement child’, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, Vol. 18, 2.  Pp. 109-138. 

Sabbadini, A. (1988).  The Replacement Child.  Contemporary Psychoanalysis. 24: 528-547.

Schellinski , K. (2019). Individuation for Adult Replacement Children: Ways of Coming into Being. Routledge

Schwab, G. (2009). Replacement children: The transgenerational transmission of traumatic loss. American Imago 66 (3), 277-310.

Silver, D. (1983). The Dark Lady: Sibling loss and mourning in the Shakespearean sonnets. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 3: (3): 513–527.

Storey, D. (2021).  A Stinging Delight.  David Story:  A Memoir.  Faber & Faber.

Whitebook, J. (2017).  Freud.  An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge UP

Wilson, E. (1988). Stendhal as a Replacement Child: The Theme of the Dead Child in Stendhal's Writings. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 8:108-133

This Podcast Series, published by the International Psychoanalytical Association, is part of the activities of the IPA Communication Committee and is produced by the IPA Podcast Editorial Team. Head of the Podcast Editorial Team is Gaetano Pellegrini. Editing and Post-Production: Massimiliano Guerrieri.