How Does It Feel To Be Abandoned?

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), Painting by Edvard Munch, 1896

Experiencing abandonment, especially in early childhood, is often devastating and bewildering. Psychoanalysts, starting with Sigmund Freud, have examined how a young child’s sense of security can quickly turn to panic and despair when a primary caregiver is absent for too long. The initial hope for comfort can shift into a deeper, more enduring hopelessness if the child comes to expect that their needs will not be met. This transition from temporary distress to a lasting despair forms what some psychoanalysts refer to as a "mundane trauma," marked by the slow realization that the sense of care and connection they rely on may not always be there.

British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott explored abandonment’s psychological toll, particularly the mind’s inability to fully process it. In his essay “Fear of Breakdown,” Winnicott describes abandonment as a catastrophe that the young mind cannot yet comprehend, leading to an absence of emotional response or a sense of emptiness rather than the usual internal distress. This “pain of the void” represents a profound lack rather than a tangible feeling, a state where the mind is disoriented by an experience too traumatic to be registered. Winnicott’s ideas suggest that unprocessed trauma lingers beneath the surface, shaping the self in ways that remain unspoken and unfelt but deeply impactful.

This experience of abandonment can result in what Winnicott calls “disintegration,” where the world feels as if it is collapsing, leaving the child with a sense of falling into an abyss, without any foundational support. This “falling forever” feeling creates a sense of permanent isolation, where trust in relationships becomes strained and the natural presence of another person feels perpetually absent. Although the child grows into adulthood, the original experience of abandonment can cast a long shadow over their selfhood and relationships, silently shaping how they view the world and their place within it.

Last Class, Painting by Susan Driscoll, 2016

French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva builds on this notion of abandonment, focusing on the abjection, or the extreme alienation, that accompanies experiences beyond representation. Abandonment, Kristeva suggests, can lead to a wordless, unrepresentable pain—so singular and overwhelming that it falls outside the reach of language. This kind of pain is tied to a feeling of worthlessness and the inability to understand one’s suffering, resulting in an existential state where one feels entirely alone and irrelevant. Such experiences resist verbal expression, reinforcing the isolating impact of abandonment.

Abandonment in psychoanalysis, then, is understood not only as the physical absence of a caregiver but as a psychic event that exceeds language and comprehension. Art and literature have long grappled with this by transforming abandonment into symbolic representations, allowing others to vicariously understand and survive it. Writers like Emily Dickinson bring the experience to life through vivid language, suggesting that while words may not fully capture the void, they can give it a form. Psychoanalysts like Winnicott and Kristeva, therefore, view abandonment as a key theme in the exploration of human suffering, pointing to the enduring influence of unprocessed and unspeakable traumas on the psyche.