Separation and Coparental Reconstruction

A Psychoanalytic Perspective

In my clinical practice, I encounter many parents in transition, facing the profound adjustments brought on by separation. One recurring theme is the presence of children caught in parental conflict—sometimes latent, sometimes overt—where each adult seeks to express their narrative, their legitimacy, their pain. The child then becomes, knowingly or unknowingly, the vehicle of an unresolved conflict. This text offers a psychoanalytic reading of such situations to rethink the parental bond after the rupture.

A Rupture with Multiple Effects: Conscious Feelings and Unconscious Traces

The separation of a parental couple entails deep transformations. It cannot be reduced to a legal event or an emotional decision; it brings about a psychic reconfiguration of emotional investments and representations. Each parent must disengage from the conjugal bond while maintaining a viable coparental relationship.

This process often reactivates intense affects: anger, sadness, a sense of failure, narcissistic wounds—and also more archaic anxieties, tied to the fear of abandonment or the loss of a loved object. These unconscious elements may emerge through practical concerns, reviving early, unprocessed experiences.

Clinical example: A recently separated mother experiences the reorganization of custody schedules as exclusion. She says, “The father decides everything on his own,” and adds, “As if I no longer exist in my son’s story.” This feeling of sidelining reveals a narcissistic wound but also an anxiety of erasure—of being erased from the symbolic narrative of the child, as though her maternal role were under threat.

From Couplehood to Coparenting: Displacement and Rivalry

The end of romantic attachment does not signify the end of the parental bond, but demands a displacement of psychic investment and transference. Without sufficient processing, this shift may evolve into persistent rivalry, with coparenting becoming the battleground of an unresolved separation.

This conflict may be fueled by the fear of no longer being present in the child’s affective world. A lack of recognition for the other parent sometimes leads to compensatory strategies—where each tries to regain a dominant or exclusive role.

Clinical example: A father confides in session that he struggles to accept not bathing his daughter at the mother’s house. “It’s our moment. She’s depriving me of it like she wants to cut our bond.” His words reflect a fusion-like attachment that remains unprocessed, but also a deeper fear: that of his paternal role being erased. The ritual becomes the safeguard of affection, and its absence threatens his existence as a loved figure.

The Child at the Heart of Reconstruction: Loyalties, Splitting, and Symptoms

Children continue to need both parents after a separation. But to keep developing, they require a coherent symbolic space where identifications can be maintained without splitting.

When one parent invalidates or erases the other, the child faces a loyalty conflict. They may experience diffuse anxiety, unspoken guilt, or a protective attitude toward the more vulnerable parent. Psychological effects may manifest in symptoms—sleep disorders, aggression, somatic complaints—that signal an internal split between the child’s identifications.

Clinical example: A seven-year-old boy begins referring to himself in the third person after his father leaves. He says, “He’s sad because Daddy yelled.” This linguistic shift reveals a defensive process—a dissociation of emotion indicating difficulty integrating affect into subjective speech.

The Role of the Clinician as Containing Third

Within this complex dynamic, the clinician plays the role of containing third. They offer a space where losses can be processed, where affect can circulate, and where the parental bond can be reconstructed.

This position is not aimed at reconciling the adults but at restoring exchanges in which each parent is acknowledged in their role—as a bearer of essential function in the child’s psychic economy.

Clinical Conclusion

In session, I witness families in transition, traversed by deep movements—sometimes wounded, often disorganized, but never frozen. My role is to welcome this complexity, contain the projections, and support the emergence of a renewed parental space.

Psychoanalysis does not offer technical solutions but enables us to interpret relational ghosts, reactivated oedipal scenarios, fears of abandonment, and narcissistic struggles playing out in the present. It opens the way for a living form of coparenting—one that can rebuild outside the field of conflict.

For the child not to become a mere witness of parental conflict, but to remain central to care and connection, it is essential to preserve a shared psychic space—where each parent can continue to exist, not in the pain of separation, but in the responsibility of building a future.