I have taken the liberty of copying this from the myss.com website:

Child: Orphan

The Orphan Child is the major character in most well known children's
stories, including Little Orphan Annie, the Matchstick Girl, Bambi,
the Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella, and
many more. The pattern in these stories is reflected in the lives of
people who feel from birth as if they are not a part of their family,
including the family psyche or tribal spirit. Yet precisely because
orphans are not allowed into the family circle, they have to develop
independence early in life. The absence of family influences,
attitudes, and traditions inspires or compels the Orphan Child to
construct an inner reality based on personal judgment and experience.
Orphans who succeed at finding a path of survival on their own are
celebrated in fairy tales and folk stories as having won a battle with
a dark force, which symbolically represents the fear of surviving
alone in this world.

The shadow aspect manifests when orphans never recover from growing up
outside the family circle. Feelings of abandonment and the scar tissue
from family rejection stifle their maturation, often causing them to
seek surrogate family structures in order to experience tribal union.
Therapeutic support groups become shadow tribes or families for an
Orphan Child who knows deep down that healing these wounds requires
moving on to adulthood. Identifying with the Orphan begins by
evaluating your childhood memories, paying particular attention to
whether your painful history arises from the feeling that you were
never accepted as a family member.

Films: Margaret O'Brien in The Secret Garden; Victoire Thivisol in
Ponette ; Hayley Mills in Pollyanna.

Fiction: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz by L. Frank Baum.

Drama: The Changeling by Thomas Middleton.

Fairy Tales: Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi, The Little Mermaid.

Religion/Myth: Romulus and Remus (twins of Roman myth who were cast
into the Tiber, miraculously rescued by a she-wolf, and went on to
found Rome); Moses; Havelock the Dane (in medieval romance, the orphan
son of Birkabegn, King of Denmark, cast adrift by treacherous
guardians but found and raised by a British fisherman, and eventually
made King of Denmark and part of England).

--- In mysslist@yahoogroups.com, "Kristy Swift" <klswift@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I was wondering if I could ask anyone who has an Orphan archetype
and who
> has made their peace with it to share how they managed to 'grow up'
and if
> anything positive can come of the Orphan archetype, or if I am being too
> 'Pollyanna' and looking at it in too simplistic a way. I have a strong
> Orphan, and have recognised the shadow side of it in me too, which is to
> become clingy, put people on pedestals or seek to be adopted by
surrogate
> parent figures. It's painful and lonely not to have a close, trusting
> relationship with any older, parental individual, but I am determined to
> work through this. I would really appreciate your insights.
>
> xx
> Kristy.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>