Child analysis with a severely disturbed adopted child

Much of this paper focuses on the psychoanalysis of Bert, a severely disturbed 9-year-old adopted boy. Constitutional factors, parents' personalities and parenting styles, and libidinal and aggressive zonal fixations all played a role in determining Bert's problems. Besides the normal developmental challenges, the adoptive child faces the unique developmental task of becoming the true adoptive child of true adoptive parents. Bert's case shows how this process can be facilitated in psychoanalytic treatment. After a brief introduction to the psychological implications of adoption at various stages of development, the paper elaborates on how and why Bert first came for treatment and describes three phases in the treatment, the first session, the period of transference developments, and the termination phase. The final section outlines special treatment issues and the implications for the psychoanalytic treatment of an adopted child.