Revisiting some moments in the psychotherapy of an adolescent girl adopted as a baby, who later sought treatment after a suicide attempt, the analytical process is view as analogous to a process of reciprocal adoption, including the adoptive parents who entrust the child to the therapist. The analytical work fosters in the adolescent the adoption of split-off parts of herself, leading her to re-appropriate her history for herself. Becoming and adult entails the possibility to choose one’s affiliations: she will be able to adopt in her turn.
The silent adoption entails a contract between several parties: the foster child, the family social worker, the institution, and the parents. This adoption arises partly from the need for the child to distance him or herself from guilty feelings about the parent-murder he thinks he has committed, and partly from the echo effect that re-actualizes a wound that has been poorly elaborated or unelaborated in the adult. The narcissistic dimension is prevalent here.
After reviewing the different axes of filiation according to J. Guyotat, with which the narrative axis may be associated (B. Golse, M. R. Moro), and relocating the issue of psychical bisexuality with regard to the precursors of sexual differentiation, this article will offer some reflections and clinical illustrations of adolescents’ aggression as it relates to identity and narrative filiation on the one hand, and the psychical bisexuality of adoptive parents on the other.
Using the concept of the family romance we explore the work of rewriting memory and reconciling affects, particularly in the adopted adolescent, with or without pathology, which enables him or her to move towards a coherent identity. This concept allows us to illustrate how the adoption situation can color the whole adolescent process, without changing the nature of it.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 695-703.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7