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International Review of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (aipcf.net), June 2018. Melancholic reactions to loss in couples and families:
The road between Corinth and Thebes: Adoption and loss*
Krisztina Glausius and Julie Humphries
Abstract: This paper explores the corresponding losses experienced by both parents and children in adoptive families. The authors draw on the myth of Oedipus to explore the impact of these losses, and the psychic situation that can result when the necessary working through of these traumatic losses through a mourning process is incomplete. This paper argues that working therapeutically with adoptive couples can help prevent adoption breakdown that is often linked with such unmetabolised losses and earlier traumas suffered by both adoptive parental couples and adopted children. The paper also examines the dynamics of couple relationships where working through such losses is particularly problematic. The above is illustrated with two anonymised and composite case examples. The authors draw on their experience gained from the Adopting Together Service at Tavistock Relationships, which offers analytic psychotherapy to adoptive parents.
Keywords: Oedipus myth, adoption, mourning, loss, narcissistic couple relationships, couple psychotherapy.