The Complex Psychology of Being Adopted: What Clinicians Need to Know

The adoption and mental health fields have viewed adoption as being only about children. Adopted adolescents are a more recent afterthought, with adults nowhere on the radar. From their psychodynamic perspectives on the psychology of being adopted, the presenters maintain that therapists often do not recognize the critical differences between adopted and non-adopted patients, or the need for important modifications in treatment. This requires specialized advanced training. Therapists’ knowledge base needs to include an understanding of early developmental trauma within the first three years of life and its implications for altered neuropsychological development, potentially into adulthood. Intensive psychodynamic treatment provides a pathway toward addressing the likely combination of ambiguous mourning, anxious attachments, fragmented identity formation, and confused sexual development. These stimulate unique complexities in the transference and countertransference and, for the therapist, a deeper appreciation of many universal issues.