Just pretend: The importance of symbolic play and its interpretation in intensive psychotherapy with a four-year-old adopted boy

The barriers which prevent some children from settling into an adoptive home are intangible, but make themselves felt through behaviour which puzzles and disturbs. A situation may arise whereby a child not only suffers the loss of his parents of origin, but subsequently appears unable to access the love offered by his new adoptive parents and so suffers a ‘double deprivation’ (Williams, 1997).