ABSTRACT
One of the risks of adopting children in care is that they may perpetuate their deprivation by rejecting the loving care offered them. Clinical experience shows that when this happens, it can sometimes be possible to facilitate children's attachment to their new parents by involving them in individual therapy. This chapter aims to describe the difficulties inherent for these deprived and rejected children in making new attachments and to consider how a new relationship to a psychotherapist may help these children to take the risk. Concepts from psychoanalysis and from attachment theory are used to understand the therapeutic process. Children who enter the care system have experienced abuse and neglect at the hands of their care-givers, the very adults to whom they are attached and on whom they depend for their safety and well-being. Attachment theory is concerned with survival, with the dimension from protection and safety to danger and fear.
