Infant therapy with adopted children

Using the method of infant therapy with adopted children poses a particular challenge for the therapist, because trained psychologist and knowledge about the child’s life prior to the adoption is always fraught with gaps, inaccuracies, and a degree of general uncertainty. The new parents’ meeting with the child forms the point of departure for the therapy, regardless of the child’s age, and regardless whether this meeting took place in a residential institution, at a hospital, or in a foster family in the child’s native country. In late adoptions, the loss may be traumatic and a severe psychological strain for the child. With early adoptees, the loss is usually not acute or traumatic, and the child is rarely aware of it before the age of five years. The awareness emerges gradually with the child’s growing cognitive understanding of what it means to be adopted. Some adoptees are seized by an overwhelming sense of alienation and disconnectedness.