Preliminary Report of the Study Group on the Problems of Adopted Children

This study was initiated just over a year ago by a group of therapists who each had treated, or was treating, an adopted child. Some of the therapists had considerable experience in the field of adoption, deriving from work in child guidance clinics, employment as social workers, or engagement in research projects.

The group consists of five staff members and one student1. It has been meeting once a week.

Our general aim was to learn about the inner world of the adopted child. We felt that the analytic material would lend itself singularly well to this purpose.

We were aware that, although a great deal has been written about adoption, for a long time the legal and social aspects had been given greater prominence in the literature than the psychological aspects, and that reports based on child analysis (as distinct from psychotherapy) were very few indeed, We were also aware that, while social agencies were greatly concerned about the child's welfare, the assessment of the emotional situation of the adopted, or to-be-adopted, child was based on outward signs of his functioning and adjustment and on the outward signs of fit between the adoptive family and the adopted child2.

We noted that, with the general increase of psychological awareness in the community in recent years, and with more coloured babies available for adoption, several assumptions have begun to be questioned concerning the fit between the adoptive parents and the child: for example, is it essential for the adoptive family and the adopted child to have the same social and cultural background, or the same religion? Is a psychological fit not more important?

At the same time, we could see some trends (this refers mainly to Britain) which were a reflection less of the adopted child's emotional needs than of social changes, especially the increase in one-parent families. For example, the requisite for the adoptive family, that it consist of two parents, is being modified. Recently even single men have begun to