Childhood Parent and Sibling Loss in Adult Patients

Stimulated by the report of Hilgard, in which she called attention to the temporal coincidence of anniversary reactions in hospitalized patients with histories of childhood parent loss, and by the psychoanalytic observations of Fleming and her collaborators who have investigated the effect of orphanhood in childhood on ego development and the formation of a transference neurosis, the author undertook the review of all of the cases that he had seen in his office practice over an 8-year period, where there had been either parental or sibling deaths prior to the patient's 19th birthday. The purpose of this communication is to present and briefly discuss the results of this survey and to indicate areas for future study. Method of Investigation The general population in this investigation consisted of all patients personally evaluated by the author over an 8-year span in his private psychiatric office