ABSTRACT
This is one of the several papers I have written about the extraordinary and paradoxical emotional tasks of moving a young child from their foster home, to their adoptive home. The importance of new transitional phenomena which can emerge in therapy at such times, ‘therapeutic transitional phenomena’ is discussed, as are the multiple traumatic losses of the young child whose transition from fostering to adoption is the focus of the detailed clinical example. The developmental significance of playing is enlarged on from a Winnicottian perspective.
