Mirroring Part 1: The Wellisch Letter

The first known warning about the psychological danger to adoptees of the loss of genetic mirroring

In 1952 the Journal of Mental Health published a letter from the psychiatrist E. Wellisch under the title “Children without Genealogy—A Problem of Adoption.” It subsequently became known as the first warning, in print, of the danger that “genealogical bewilderment” (not Wellisch’s phrase) poses to the psychological well-being of adoptees. Here is the letter; text reproduced below.

Text of the Wellisch Letter

Dear Sir,—May I draw attention to the observation that lack of knowledge of their real parents and ancestors can be a cause of maladjustment in children. There are, of course, obvious reasons why on adoption of a baby often only very few particulars are disclosed to the adoptive parents and sometimes no particulars can be given about the adopted child’s family and origin. There also is the question of whether or not it matters if a child has no knowledge of these particulars. Special attention is not generally paid to one’s genealogy. It is usually accepted as a matter of fact. One is usually not more aware of it than one is of one’s shadow or mirror image.

Taking up, however, this analogy, it is noteworthy that the shadow and mirror image of a person have a considerable neuro-psychiatric significance. They are extensions of the “body-image”. That is of “the picture of our own body which we form in our mind”. (Paul Schilder). The body-image is not restricted to experiences of the individual’s own body but also extends beyond its confines; a hat, a piece of clothing, the voice or breath become part of it. This also applies to the shadow and the reflection in a mirror. It is the reason why the shadow was regarded by primitive people as an actual part of the body and why mirrors were used in witchcraft. The German romanticists Adalbert van Chamisso and his friend E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote strange stories of the imaginary loss of one’s shadow and reflection in a mirror. Their heroes Peter Schlemihl and Emanuel Spikher made a pact with the devil and sold him their shadow and mirror picture. The loss of these attributes, although they were not material parts of the individuals themselves, had disastrous results. As our modern knowledge of the extended body-image shows, these fictions, fantastic as they sound, were not pure inventions of romantic minds.

A further aspect of the extension of the body-image is the intimate relationship which one possesses between one’s own body-image and the body-images of others. As a matter of fact persons outside ourselves are essential for the development of our complete body-image. The most important persons in this respect are our real parents and the other members of our family. Knowledge of and definite relationship to his genealogy is therefore necessary for a child to build up his complete body-image and world-picture. It is an inalienable and entailed right of every person. There is an urge, a call in everybody to follow and fulfil the tradition of his family, race, nation, and the religious community into which he was born. The loss of this tradition is a deprivation which may result in the stunting of emotional development.

In the light of these considerations it is understandable that there are cases of maladjustment in children which show that the deprivation of a child’s knowledge of his genealogy can have harmful consequences. They can express themselves in a vague feeling within the child that some injustice was done to him. It may lead to an irrational rebellion against his adoptive parents, the world as a whole and eventually to delinquency. The problem deserves special studies and attention.

Yours, etc.,

E. WELLISCH.

Child Guidance Clinic, Bexleyheath, Kent.

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The letter is obviously a product of its time. Wellisch’s reference to “primitive people” strikes a nerve. His belief that people feel an urge to “follow and fulfil [sic] the tradition of his family, race, nation, and the religious community into which he was born” invites skepticism, and indeed it serves as an entry point into critiques that have been made of the whole substance of the letter, as I will discuss in a future post.

Another feature of the language looks dated for a different reason. Wellisch contrasts the adoptee’s adoptive parents with their “real parents.” In my Fourteen Propositions I spoke of the treachery of this language, often weaponized against adoptees who are curious about their biological family histories. In this letter, however, we don’t need to read a polemical intention into his use of “real” as a substitute for “biological,” “original,” or “first.” He is ascribing no deficits or flaws to adoptive parents as caregivers of their children. But it is clear that Wellisch thinks of the relationship between an adoptee and their biological family history as I do: the transfer of legal custody and parental rights does not eliminate the adoptee’s original genealogical relationships, but only renders them to some degree—completely, in closed adoption—inaccessible. Note that Wellisch doesn’t qualify the term “genealogy.” By “his genealogy” Wellisch means the adoptee’s original, “biological” genealogy.

Now think about Wellisch’s notion of the body-image. This is not merely something you can capture in a photograph or on film. I recall Wittgenstein’s discussion of the difference between a picture of a thing and an image of it. He says in Philosophical Investigations §301: “An image is not a picture, but a picture can correspond to it.” My body-image has elements that I can picture: my face looks like this, I walk like so. But the whole significance of the image is not exhausted by those elements. Nor do I mean that the “Gestalt,” the overall picture, is more than the sum of its parts. What I mean is that my body-image changed after I discovered my birth family, because the meaning of all of it—the elements you can capture in a photograph or on film, or even the more private elements of my inner mental life I might record in a diary—changed once I began to see continuities between those things and aspects of my birth family.

Before I knew anything about how I resembled (or didn’t resemble) my birth mother and the rest of her family, I felt my alienness from my adoptive family as a self-alienness. As a child I had dark brown hair and a light olive complexion, and very fine, almost invisible eyebrows. My eyebrows bothered me. No one else in my adoptive family had them. Why did I have disappearing eyebrows? (They have since darkened.) And probably the first thing I noticed about my resemblance to my birth mother’s family was the eyebrows. Prior to knowing facts like this, I felt like a mere bundle of attributes. I liken it to a collection of spare parts. The invisible rhizomes connecting everyone in my adoptive family didn’t touch me. What were all my attributes an expression of? Not knowing this, I had a body-image stamped MYSTERY and ALIEN. It isn’t too much to say, as other adoptees have, that I felt I was living in a borrowed body.

The shadow and the mirror, in the stories of Hoffmann and Chamisso Wellisch mentions, are perceptible things, but they are also intangible things. That is why they can symbolize the idea of the body-image. An incomplete or disadvantaged body-image isn’t a matter of anything physically missing, but it does give rise to an uncanny feeling—as does the loss of one’s shadow or reflection in the stories. Adoptees without genealogical knowledge picture themselves in the same way as other people do, in a sense. But the body-image is different. Or at least mine was.

Wellisch makes a move so fast that it took my breath away when I first read the letter. After saying that knowledge of one’s genealogical history is necessary for building a “complete body-image and world-picture,” he immediately adds that this is “an inalienable and entailed right of every person.” I don’t think that anything in the letter prepares us for this move. I of course agree with Wellisch. Knowledge of one’s genealogy is, as I believe, and as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child states, the right of every person. But how do we connect the idea of the incomplete body-image to the idea that everyone has an inalienable right to the materials for building a complete body-image? In short, how do we show that everyone has a right not to suffer this “intangible” form of harm?

When adoptees and donor-conceived people try to explain why their losses matter, people find it difficult to picture what is lost. I think it would take tremendous imaginative powers to convey what that sense of self-alienation in my body-image is like, and how it haunted me throughout my childhood and into middle age, and how it might have affected my self-esteem, my relationships with other people, and the momentous choices I have made in my life. Ultimately, I make an appeal to reciprocity: we, the adopted and donor-conceived, are merely demanding what the rest of you take for granted: proof and documentation of your family histories. But maybe this alone is not enough. To give full force to that appeal, maybe I need to get you to see that you benefit from taking this for granted. Which is the same as getting you to see that not having it is harmful.

In my next post I will look further into the idea of genetic mirroring. We will consider some suggestive remarks by the philosopher J. David Velleman, who is neither adopted nor donor-conceived, but whose imaginative powers, I believe, allow him to appreciate how the loss of that which cannot be pictured is nevertheless a misfortune.