This is a child that parents gave birth to in place of another, deceased or lost child. Moreover, the parents could have done this deliberately, and they openly talk about it. Or they could have done it unconsciously. In addition, one more clarification needs to be made. Not every child born after the death or abortion of a previous one is a replacement. He will most likely become one if his parents were unable to move away from the image of a deceased child and identify a new child with him. The fates of Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Beethoven, and Adolf Hitler are often cited as examples of a replacement child. For example, the artist Van Gogh was born exactly a year after the death of his older brother, also Vincent. As a substitute child who lived, as it were, in place of his brother, he, as suggested by his biography, involuntarily “took” someone else’s place and name, and went crazy because of this. It was unbearable to live alone in two persons - alive and dead. A replacement child is, of course, a way to cope with loss. But the deceased child begins to live in a living person through the expectations of the parents, through the idealization of the deceased, through comparison with the deceased and devaluation of the living child. In 1964, in a work entitled “On the Replacement of the Child,” Albert and Barbara Cain brought together observations of six children aged from 7 to 12 years old with various psychological problems. All of these children were conceived by parents in the process of grieving for a child who died in pre-teenage under tragic circumstances. Subsequently, other scientists continued to study this phenomenon. They concluded that the death of a previous child greatly influences the mother's attitude towards the new baby. The mother tries to compare the living and the dead, looking for similarities and differences. Some of them find it difficult to touch or even look at children. Often mothers associate their behavior with the death of their previous child. The similarity of children causes severe anxiety, which is difficult to cope with, and at the same time, the mother cannot get rid of obsessive thoughts that the child is completely different. But, as the child grows, positive dynamics are observed. Gradually the real child takes his place, and the disturbances in interaction disappear. When a child reaches the age at which his predecessor died, it becomes easier for parents to establish an attachment relationship with him. Researchers believe that with the support of a psychotherapist, parents are more successful in accepting a new child. How might a replacement child feel? And he lives the period of his childhood and subsequent adult life with a deep sense of guilt because he supposedly has no right to life, feels the impossibility of making independent choices, is heavily dependent on his parents and tries to escape from reality through the suppression of feelings, experiencing inexplicable depression. Revealing the secret birth helps to significantly reduce anxiety, guilt and give yourself permission to be happy. It is important for all of us to know what happened before we were born, and what impact family history has on us..