Adoptive Parents: Generative Conflict and Generational Continuity

Adoptive Parents: Generative Conflict and Generational Continuity

Adoption

Harold P. Blum

Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

Vol. 38

No. 1

1983

Journal article

English

Restricted Access

Reviews the problems associated with the special reality of adoption, particularly the type of adoption that is consequent to infertility. It is contended that the adoptive situation is intergenerational and that the adoptive parents and grandparents and the adopted child form a communal network of interaction, identification, conscious and unconscious conflict, fantasy, and communication that influence the entire adoptive situation. The effects of the conflicts of the generations and the reciprocal reactions of the adoptive parents and their own parents are discussed. It is suggested that the natural parents of the adoptive parents are more important in the adoptive situation than the physically (but not psychologically absent) biological parents of the adopted child. Adoption is thought to intensify universal oedipal and intergenerational conflicts, leaving the adoptive parent feeling unfulfilled as a person and as a parent. It is contended that unless the intrapsychic conflicts surrounding adoption are resolved, adoptive parents may feel disappointed in themselves and a real or perceived disappointment to their own parents. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Kristen Walker