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The aim of our study1 is to learn about the inner world of the adopted child. Our method consists of examination of analytic material of adopted children treated at the Clinic. This material is contained in weekly reports written by therapists of these children.
So far we have gathered treatment material on 6 adopted children (one in non-intensive treatment). There were 2 boys and 4 girls, their ages at the beginning of treatment ranged from 4½ to adolescence.
In discussing the cases we focussed on issues such as the adopted children's thoughts and fantasies about their adoption and biological parents; the impingement of adoption on their sense of identity, self-representation and self-esteem and the effects of the uncertain sense of identity on their ego and superego development. There was, however, a subject of a more practical nature to which we kept returning. This was the question of when to tell the child that he is adopted.
As the literature on adoption illustrates, this is a controversial topic which has preoccupied professional people concerned with adoption for at least 40 years. In what follows we shall present opinions about the issue of telling prevailing in Great Britain and the USA, and others differing from them. We shall then give an account of our own cases and see what light they throw on the subject.
The views about when the first “telling” should take place fall within a continuum between two opposite positions: 1. The child should be told as early as possible and 2. The child should be told as late as possible, or not at all.
“The safest rule is to start telling almost before the child can talk, and long before he can understand what ‘adopted’ means”, advises Margaret Kornitzer