How does Separation Theory add to our current understanding of human behavior?
Separation Theory focuses on two major sources of psychological pain, interpersonal and existential, that impinge on the child and disturb the individuation process. Interpersonal pain is caused by deprivation, rejection, and overt or covert aggression on the part of parents, family members, and other significant figures, particularly during the early years. Existential pain refers to the basic ontological problems of aloneness, aging, deterioration, and death, as well as to other facts of existence that have a negative effect on a person’s life experience: racism, crime, economic fluctuations, poverty, political tyranny, war, ethnic strife, terrorism, etc. (Firestone, 1994). Historically, psychoanalysts have investigated the effects of interpersonal pain, whereas existential sychotherapists have directed their attention to philosophical and existential issues. Neither system deals sufficiently with the important concerns of the other; yet to ignore either seriously impairs an understa
