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This edited book seeks to examine critical challenges in the development and consolidation of personal identities during adolescence and young adulthood with primary emphasis on individuals adopted at critical moments in their developmental trajectory. The editors provide the readers with ample descriptions of personal challenges in this process from individuals who can offer introspectively and retrospectively a vivid and insightful description of that journey by virtue of their own lived experience.
One of the primary emphases of the book is to give professionals unfamiliar with the adoption experience an appreciation of the inherent pain (trauma) of the adoption experience that their adopted patients may be experiencing but unable to communicate with any clarity, and to provide the necessary vocabulary for its expression. The hope is that, by giving these professionals what the editors called “adoption-specific knowledge,” more opportunities for healing may be made possible for those seeking to make sense of their adoption experience. Most importantly, one of the goals of this volume is to raise the level of curiosity among the professional community about the adoption experience and its consequence, and to encourage more systematic research and exploration of its presence in their patients. The editors make a clear and convincing argument in this volume that the more is known about the adoption experience the more the professional is less likely to use treatment interventions that focus primarily on “support,” “psycho-educational approaches” or any other treatment interventions that do not include what the editors call “a care dimension.” They consider that it is a major mistake to engage in treatment interventions that preclude an exploration of “the adoptive person’s unique internal life that may be underlying the behavioral difficulties that may have been the initial reason for the treatment referral.
One of the most devastating experiences amon