HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1545852
The Importance of Early Primary Relationships in the Development and Psychoanalytic Understanding of Emptiness: Connecting Developmental Theory with Practice
Provisionally accepted
- University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Emptiness is an integral component of an individual's psychic development, characterized by the subjective human existential experience of loss and disconnection from the self, other people, and the external world. More generally, emptiness reflects the quality of internalized object relationships andthe intersubjective experience of early failures in affective attunement with a responsive and regulating other.. Aim: This article presents emptiness within the framework of object relations theory and incorporates Green's concept of the "dead mother" experience. This paper aims to provide knowledge that can generate interest within the psychoanalysis community by illuminating the development and psychoanalytic understanding of emptiness, a complex condition that impacts individuals and societies. Case Study: To connect theory with practice, a case study of psychoanalytical psychotherapy with an adolescent girl is presented. This clinical paradigm focuses on the subject's states of emptiness and nothingness, which are then projected onto the therapist who is attempting to contain and transform the girl's painful emotions. Conclusion: The object relations theory and the dead mother concept both can offer a valuable psychoanalytic perspective for understanding the intersubjective experience of emptiness.
Keywords: Emptiness, object relations, dead mother concept, early childhood experiences, Psychoanalysis, Psychic development
Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 13 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Papadopoulos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dimitrios Papadopoulos, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.