Some clinical issues in therapeutic consultation with sterile adoptive parents and their child

Abstract

The experience of therapeutic consultation with adoptive parents and their child provides the matter for a clinical investigation. Focusing on two accounts of these encounters, the author brings into question the sense of a rift emerging from each of these case follow-ups and speculates as to how his own position may have contributed to their failure. Counter-transference analysis here shows that some fantastical implications, relating not just to adoption but also to parental sterility, may have contributed to producing these effects and weakening the therapeutic alliance. It becomes clear that the therapist should be wary of his own projections and phantasies, as with possible curiosity as to the sexuality of those parents, the temptation to adopt an omnipotent stance in evaluating their parental skills or even ascribing latent malicious intentions to them in the process of adoption.