The solidity of adoptive filiation is gauged when tested by the identity mutations proper to adolescence. The parental setting is much solicited in its function of containing and of transforming adolescent anxieties. The path which has led to the child-turned-adolescent is then re-interrogated to test the originating imaginary world of the couple in its historicizing role. We will discuss the reasons for the psychical vulnerability of adoptive filiation, and the similarities between filiating process and adolescent process. On the parents’ side, one difficulty is represented by the inability to make a connection between the child in his pre-adoptive history, marked by abandonment and affective deficiencies, and the continuity of their own family history.