Kernberg presents the analysis of an adopted child, with emphasis on the effect that being adopted had on such issues as the transference, separation, and termination. She presents some ideas about adoption in general and discusses the technical issues surrounding the child's feeling of rejection, the matter of secrecy and its effects on learning, problems with identity and superego formation, the adoptive parents' sense of inadequacy and guilt, and variations on the family romance as experienced by child and parents. She stresses the need to deal with the adoption and to help both child and parents to accept their belonging to one another.