Unhappy Forever After: the litigious divorce and emotional suffering in the light of the winnicottian theory

Abstract

Considering that the number of litigious divorce lawsuits has been growing in recent years, the aim of this study was to understand psychoanalytically how this experience is emotionally integrated into the life story of ex-spouses. 10 adults were interviewed, 6 women and 4 men, aged between 35 and 75 years old who went through a litigation process and had minor children at the time of the divorce. Individual open interviews were conducted based on an open-ended question that gave participants the possibility of narrating their experiences through free association of ideas and affections. After each interview, a Transferential Narrative (TN) was created to communicate the context and content of the meetings, in addition to the researcher's personal impressions. The set of TNs was shared with the research group resulting in the interpretation of three fields of affective-emotional meaning. The “Unfortunate Forever After” field, from which the others develop, denotes the longevity of the emotional repercussions of divorce; the field “The fault belongs to the other” communicates the inability to appropriate one's own responsibility in the construction one’s lived reality; and, "What about the children?" denounces the situation of children who end up neglected amidst the turmoil of parental emotions.