Suitcase children.

Suitcase children: abandoned, transported, reunited with strangers who claimed to be parents. The trauma began when they crossed without you.

Suitcase children.

They were called "suitcase children"—creatures transported between countries according to adult convenience. Abandoned with grandparents while their parents emigrated, reunited years later with strangers who claimed kinship. The child who lost her parents at age two does not recognize the telephone voice a year later: "Who are you?". The woman who carried her in her womb has become a stranger. Siblings are new faces. The biological family is more foreign than the foreign country.

Özbek documents the devastation: the younger the child at the moment of abandonment, the deeper the damage. Each parental visit reopens the wound; each departure confirms that attachment is dangerous. Better not to take root. These children grow up fearing connection because the original connection was betrayed. Their parents chose geography over bond. The message inscribed in the body: whoever you love, disappears. Protect yourself by not loving.

The adult analysand who was a suitcase child presents relational difficulties that precede their own migration. The trauma did not begin when they crossed the border—it began when their parents crossed without them.

Rerefences Özbek, T. (2021). The tale of those who went forth: On the inner experience of migration and forced migration. En K. White & I. Klingenberg (Eds.), Migration and intercultural psychoanalysis: Unconscious forces and clinical issues (pp. 91–107). Routledge.

Psychotherapy

1h

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