You need to separate from your parents! - already some kind of slogan of our time. There are so many conversations on this topic. And probably everyone already knows what it is.⁣⁣Today we look at this concept from the point of view of psychoanalysis.⁣⁣1️⃣When talking about separation, we are talking about the mental world. Separation occurs precisely in the psyche; it is a mostly unconscious process. You can go as far as you like, not communicate and not depend on your parents, “realize” something until you’re blue in the face, but still find parental figures in other people and act out your pain with them. That is, separation for an adult is not only and not so much about relationships with real parents. ⁣⁣2️⃣Separation is a process for two. Always. It doesn’t happen that the “child” doesn’t want to separate, but the mother does. We are, of course, talking about unconscious desire. There is nothing more complicated than the relationship between mother and child, since separation stories always affect both: not only the child is weaned, potty trained and self-care, but the mother is also separated from the child’s body. You will never hear “I really want to bathe a child at 10 years old and wash his genitals” or “I really want to sleep with my child”, you will hear something like: “he does it very badly himself”, “he just can’t go to sleep without me." ⁣⁣3️⃣Separation involves the subjectification of the child, that is, it requires recognition of his difference from his mother, her desires and demands. This is our eternal conversation about the fact that a child is a separate, different person, and not an extension of the parent. 4️⃣Separation occurs through the trauma of loss. Here we are talking, first of all, about the loss of the mother’s body as a “support”: first the child loses the breast, then he learns to somehow deal with his body: to control it, to inhabit it. And here the maternal position is extremely important: does the mother treat the child’s body as her own object (“I feed him,” “we pooped,” “quickly take your hands off”) or does the child’s body belong to the child?⁣⁣5️⃣Words that a person hears in childhood, largely determines his subjectivity. The voices of significant others eventually become inner voices. Parents know this very well when, while communicating with their children, they suddenly hear a tone and phrase from themselves, literally from the past: “I was scared when I said that.” With what words and how we punish ourselves - here.⁣⁣❓Is it possible to talk about absolute independence and complete separation from parental figures? No. Growing up, we, of course, no longer need to be carried or fed, but one way or another we all deal with the parental gaze, which has already become our inner gaze, with evaluating and instructing inner voices. Moral norms, attitude towards others, how we see ourselves are not independent constructions from within, it is always something that comes from others and in relationships with others. Therefore, it is a mistake to consider separation as a process that can be brought to a conscious level, or completely “worked through” it.⁣⁣❗️Separation from parental figures in the psyche is usually an effect of psychoanalysis, and never a planned and linear process. Like, today we are working on separation with the mother, and tomorrow with the father. One person in analysis will talk about the pressure of the inner gaze, the feeling of the unbearable pressure of the internal censor; another - about the fact that he constantly finds tyrannical bosses, whose recognition he is trying to get; the third will discover that he feels with his husband or wife the same way he felt with his mother (yes, the opinion that a woman chooses a husband who is like her father, and a man chooses a wife who is like her mother is wrong, this is not always the case). And it's all about our connection with our parents.⁣⁣❤️We carry our relationships with parental figures throughout our lives, and that's normal. More precisely, it simply cannot be any other way. Therefore, it is pointless to look for a universal recipe for separation; you need to study your own history and everyone will have their own recipe.⁣⁣