Understanding Adoption

Rarely has an edited volume on the topic of adoption offered so rich a collection of chapters steeped in theory and clinical practice examples. ...clinicians working with this population could find few better uses for the modest purchase price of the paperback version of Understanding Adoption. However, the use many readers will make of this volume might warrant investing in a hardback copy... Clinical Social Work Journal This is a wonderful and desperately needed book addressing the multiple levels of complexity faced by clinicians working with adopted children and their families. The authors address a topic that has received virtually no attention in the psychoanalytic literature, despite the fact that adoption has long been recognized as posing particular challenges to families and clinicians alike. The need for a broad reaching and nuanced discussion of these issues is especially keen today, when traditional, international, and non-traditional adoptions bring families to the consulting room on a very regular basis. Thankfully, this compilation of clinically rich, compelling, thoughtful and accessible papers will give clinicians a much needed and wise guide to navigating the array of diverse internal, familial, biological, and societal influences that characterize each adoption story. -- Arietta Slade, Ph.D., Professor, Clinical and Developmental Psychology, the City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Assoc A deeply compassionate and illuminating exploration of the psychological ramifications of adoption in all of its diverse forms. -- Francine Cournos, MD ...is an excellent book...is easy to read and jargon-free. It is a tour de force of issues on adoption...a wonderful tool for teaching concepts of attachment theory, internalizastion and identity formation. It thoroughly covers the process of psychotherapy as well as how tranference and counter-transference affect the treatment. Psychoanalytic Social Work |s|a|fKatherine Marsh The world of adoption has undergone radical change and, for the first time, we have a book, which brings together the range, variety, complexity and impact of adoption on everyone involved. For all those therapists, teachers and parents who need to understand the contemporary experience of adoption, this significant book is an important basic reference that speaks to the complex challenges adoption can pose to child and adult development, and also illuminates the potential for secure identity and joyful engagement with the future for each person in the adoptive configuration. -- Kerry Kelly Novick and Jack Novick, authors of Working with Parents Makes Therapy Work Rarely has an edited volume on the topic of adoption offered so rich a collection of chapters steeped in theory and clinical practice examples. ...clinicians working with this population could find few better uses for the modest purchase price of the paperback version of Understanding Adoption. However, the use many readers will make of this volume might warrant investing in a hardback copy. Clinical Social Work Journal Understanding Adoption is a long-overdue look into how adoption affects everyone involved, from the clinician/patient and parent/child dyads, to the social workers, teachers, foster parents, medical professionals, and adoption process. It is a groundbreaking and very welcome contribution to the literature and deserves to be widely read and discussed...an incredibly valuable tool. It as the unevenness expectable of writing breaking new ground, and is all the more exciting to read...Given the opportunity to turn back time, we would gift a copy of this book to each and every coworker and adoptive family in our care. -- Winter 2008 Psychoanalytic Books