Adoption as a Lifelong Process: A Psychiatric Analysis

This book addresses the psychosocial complexities of adoption from multiple perspectives, including the biological family, adopted child, and adoptive parents. It highlights the must-have sensitivity and tactfulness for recurring discussions of the adoption situation. Organized into 10 parts, the book begins with a brief outline of the history of adoption and its legal status from antiquity to modern times. Chapters in the first half of the book examine critical topics such as different parenthood situations, stress and pain processes in early childhood, and challenges of domestic, international, transcultural, transracial, foster, and sexual and gender minorities adoption. Within the second half of the book, chapters describe the birth parents' difficulties in relinquishing their infant, the motives of the adoptive parents, and the hardships of the adoptive children in self-development. The final chapters address the topic of deprivation, traumatization, and developmental trauma disorders on a psychodynamic level accompanied by clinical vignettes. Unique, perceptive, and insightful, Adoption, A Life Long Process is an essential resource for all of those involved in the adoption process, including counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, adoptive parents, and biological parents.