Psychoanalytic perspectives on adoption and ambivalence Paul M. Brinich, Ph.D. Director of Psychological Services Children's Psychiatric Institute John Umstead Hospital Butner, North Carolina 27509-1626 Clinical Associate Professor Department of Psychology University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3270 Associate Consulting Professor of Medical Psychology Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Duke University Medical Center Durham, North Carolina 27710 Please address correspondence to: 320 Glendale Drive, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514-5914 E-mail address: brinich@unc.edu Revised: October 9, 1995 Psychoanalytic perspectives on adoption and ambivalence Abstract In this paper we examine childhood adoption from a psychoanalytic perspective and find that some particular elements of the psychopathology which is sometimes associated with adoption are simply special instances of some general phenomena which pertain to all parent- child relationships. History, mythology, and literature add to what we know from clinical work: All children and all parents, whether their relationships are adoptive or biological, must come to terms with warring feelings of love and hate towards one another. It is this ambivalence which lies at the center of the myth of Oedipus; and while Freud chose to emphasize Oedipus' ambiva- lence toward his parents, the cycle began with Oedipus' parents. Parental ambivalence is an essential contributor both to the myth and to the intrapsychic phenomena which we call oedipal . . . whether these are viewed from the perspective of the drives and their vicissitudes; from the perspective of self- and object-representations organized in enduring intrapsychic scenarios which are lived out in daily human relationships; or of the need to create and to maintain an enduring sense of "self." Psych oanalytic perspectives on adoption and ambivalence Introduction Despite its origins in psychopathology, psychoanalysis now sheds light upon many normal psychological phenomena; its value has increased as its scope has widened beyond its earlier, more clinical boundaries. In this paper, which oscillates between two centers -- that of childhood adoption and that of the ambivalences intrinsic to parent-child relationships -- we will move from the realm of psychopathology to that of normality. We take this route because much of the extant psychoanalytic writing on adoption has focused upon the psychopathology that is sometimes found in association with adoption; and this approach has been a valuable one, clinically speaking. However, over the past 19 years of my own work with adoptees and their families, I gradually have come to appreciate that adoption is psychologically significant for all of us, whether we are adopted or not. A psychoanalytic approach to adoption sheds light upon a particular, normal characteristic of human relationships -- that of ambivalence -- and in so doing carries us far beyond adoption, back toward issues which are central to psychoanalysis in its role as a psychology of normal development. To put this another way, psychoanalysis provides us with some important insights into adoption. In return, however, adoption sheds light upon some fundamental aspects of human nature which are of both clinical and theoretical interest to psychoanalysts. Thus, although this paper grew out of my clinical work with adopted children and adolescents, its implications are not limited to adoptees and adoption. It is, rather, about the adaptive grappling with ambivalence which occurs on both sides of every parent/child relationship. I contend that fantasies about adoption are common in normal development (cf. Freud [1909] on the "family romance") because they neatly express the mutual ambivalence which is a regular part of normal parent/child relationships. Adoption highlights these issues; it does not create them. A second contention of this paper is that the Oedipal myth, which balances upon the fulcrum of adoption, is founded jointly upon, on the one hand, the fantasies, wishes, and instinctual impulses which originate within the child (the angle from which we usually approach this topic) and, on the other hand, the complementary fantasies, wishes, and impulses which are part of the intrapsychic lives of the parents. We must understand the intrapsychic lives of both the child and the parents if we are to comprehend the full force and reality of the Oedipal tale. The third contention of this paper is that some of the symptomatic behavior frequently encountered in clinical work with adopted children and adolescents can be understood best when we are sensitive to the fantasies, impulses, and ambivalences which belong to both parents and their children. The varieties of adoption "Adoption" is not, and never has been, a unitary phenomenon. In 1994 our American stereotype of adoption still involves the relinquishment of an infant by its biological parents, the termination of the parental rights and responsibilities of the biological parents, the subsequent placement of the infant into the care of adoptive parents, and a formal, legally- ratified transfer of parental rights and responsibilities to the new, adoptive parents. In fact, however, this now is an unusual scenario. Major changes have occurred regarding the children who are available for adoption, the parents who adopt them, and the institution of adoption itself. Adoptees now include older children, handicapped and chronically ill children, children who have been taken away from their biological parents because of abuse or neglect, bi-racial children, and children from other countries. Adopting parents are no longer limited to white, middle-class, heterosexual but infertile couples. Now, in addition, we find step-parents, single parents, homosexual couples (of both sexes), "minority" couples, and bi-racial couples; i.e., parents whose backgrounds stray far from what once was considered "ideal." The institution of adoption has also changed. The secrecy that once surrounded every adoptive placement has been challenged, both by adoptees and by relinquishing parents. "Open adoption" -- which itself includes a wide range of possible relationships between relinquishing and adoptive families -- has become fashionable and legally permissible in many states. Some of these open adoptions include regular contact -- by letter, by telephone, or in person -- between relinquishing parents and adoptive families. Finally, and in addition to the changes outlined above, we should acknowledge that adoption as it is institutionalized in late 20th century America is neither the only nor the usual way for biological parents to deal with children they do not want or cannot support. Anthropolo gists and historians have detailed an extraordinary variety and range of social institutions designed to protect and conserve unwanted children. Many of these institutions involve some transfer of parental rights and responsibilities to new "parents." Thus there are many varieties of adoptive experience. Adoption and psychopathology My introduction to adoption in the clinical setting came nearly twenty years ago when I saw a 9-year-old adopted girl in 5-times-weekly analytic treatment. This child, whom I have called "Sophie" in an earlier, published account (Brinich, 1980), was referred for treatment because of a long-standing provocative and hostile relationship with her adoptive mother and because of her growing obesity. She had been given up at birth into the care of an adoption agency and she was placed with Mr. and Mrs. F. -- who were childless after ten years of marriage -- when she was 8 weeks old. At the time I knew relatively little about adoption . . . but Sophie did not allow me to remain ignorant for long. When I first met with her she asked whether she might have a "Teeny Tiny Tears" doll to use during our sessions. She was very specific about this and I agreed. What I did not know -- but Sophie did -- was that the Teeny Tiny Tears doll was advertised as "your very own baby" and that, printed on the carton in which she came, was a form which allowed the young owner to "adopt" the doll and to obtain a birth certificate for her. (The same marketing ploy subsequently has been used by the manufacturer of the Cabbage Patch dolls.) Sophie named the doll Sarah and quickly made her the vehicle for all sorts of repudiated fantasies and impulses: Sarah was fat, she was pregnant, her knickers were dirty or bloody, she was interested in "sex." All of this, together with the doll's mournful calling for her father (me), led her mother (Sophie) to explode in fury; she threw Sarah at me, screaming in a paroxysm of rage, "She's not my baby, she's adopted; throw her in the Thames!" [At this point we had just begun the fourth week of treatment.] Sophie's adoptive status proved to be a central part of her self-representation. As treatment proceeded it became clear that Sophie sometimes saw adoption as a repudiation: She had been gotten rid of because of her "dirty" and "sexy" impulses (which were sometimes projected onto me). At other times Sophie saw her adoption as a theft, as a kidnapping, as an escape from murderous biological parents, or as a sale for money. Unfortunately, Sophie's attitude toward the derivatives of her instinctual impulses was reinforced by her mother's attitude toward them. Mrs. F., who herself had high personal standards of cleanliness, from very early days experienced Sophie as unacceptably messy and dirty. [One example of this might suffice: When Sophie was ten weeks old Mrs. F. could not tolerate her drooling; Sophie's pediatrician noted then that Mrs. F. carried a cloth with her with which she regularly wiped Sophie's mouth. At five months Mrs. F. complained to the pediatri- cian that Sophie "gets wet through" with salivation and she continued with the mouth-wiping.] I could go on for quite some time about Sophie's treatment; she taught me quite a lot. But she was not my only adopted patient; the next few years brought me several other adopted child patients. One consultation involved "Julie", a 15-year-old girl who had been adopted at about 8 months of age. Julie told me that she wanted to meet her biological parents so that she could ask them, "Why was I adopted?" Of course, Julie's biological parents would not be able to answer that question; they could only answer Julie's real question, which was, "Why was I rejected." Julie knew from her adoptive parents that she had been neglected and abused by her biological parents; this led to the termination of parental rights and to her eventual adoption. Now, 14 years later, she seemed devoted to the task of proving that she still remained unwanted and that her own "badness" justified both the past attacks by her biological parents and the new attacks that she now provoked from her adoptive parents. Julie's adoptive parents had adopted her in order to rescue her from institutional placement. They expected that their loving care would undo any damage done to Julie by her biological parents. Unfortunately for them all, Julie was never able to "fit" her adoptive parents' ideals for their daughter. There were certain aspects of Julie's behavior that meshed with her adoptive parents' unresolved conflicts around sexuality; the parents then attacked her behavior with the same fervor which they used in defending themselves from their own sexual impulses. Julie was faced with the awful choice of disowning aspects of herself or of being disowned. Julie responded to this dilemma in the same way that Oedipus did: She ran away. Running away avoided the amputation of part of her "self." It also confirmed one aspect of her self-representation: She saw herself as a bad girl, a "slut" like her biological mother before her. Thus she deserved the past and present rejections she received. There was more to the story, however. The relationship between Julie and her adoptive father had been a close one up until the time she reached puberty. As her budding sexuality became more obvious, Julie's father was attracted, and then frightened by this attraction. He defensively projected his own impulses onto Julie's boyfriends, then became preoccupied with Julie's relationships with these boys. Julie felt his accusations of sexual promiscuity were unfair but she could do nothing to defend herself against them. The point of this brief vignette is that, as with Sophie and her parents, the unhappy story of Julie and her parents flowed from fantasies, impulses, and conflicts which originated on both sides of the child/parent relationship. Like Oedipus, Julie was running away from her own impulses; but at the same time she was also running away from those of her parents. She was disowned because of her own impulses; but she was also disowned because she had become the target of her adoptive parents' unconscious, projected impulses. My work with these children and my review of the findings of other analysts who have worked with adopted children (Brinich, 1990) has led me to conclude that certain themes do tend to emerge when adoptees are seen in psychoanalytic treatment. Although many of these themes are also encountered in the treatment of nonadoptees, they appear to take on a special force in the inner, mental lives of adoptees. Adoptees often report fantasies of having a lost, invisible, or imaginary twin; of being "secondhand" or of having been bought; of being kidnapped or stolen; of being the object of a battle between warring sets of parents; of having been abused, neglected, or abandoned in infancy; of being a messy, dirty child, a "slut", or a murderer (sometimes specifically a parricide). And adoptees often feel that their therapist is a biological parent in disguise (a feeling which sometimes leads to special technical difficulties in the analysis of transference). Such fantasies clearly convey that the self-representations of many adoptees who are patients revolve around the feeling of being unwanted. This representation of the self as "unwanted" is often joined with another, that of being neglected or attacked. Naturally, these self-representations interdigitate with normal developmental issues. For example, some adoptees -- Sophie amongst them -- combine normal anal phase conflicts with the question, "Why was I given up (for adoption)?" They explain the rejection which is implicit in adoption on the basis of their newly-emerging feelings of disgust (toward bodily excretions) and their inner experience of the conflict between love and hate. Unfortunately, many of the adopted children I have seen in treatment have attempted to modify their inner self-representations -- of being unwanted -- by testing the commitment of their adoptive parents. They ask, in actions if not in words, "Will my adoptive parents also get rid of me?" Such testing -- which usually takes the form of confronting the adoptive parents with various "forbidden" derivatives of instinctual impulses -- quickly becomes destructive, for the anxiety about rejection usually does not disappear but increases with each test; and the children end up by provoking precisely the outcome which they feared. [Robert Harmon's (Harmon, Wagonfeld & Emde, 1982) account of his treatment of 7- year-old George illustrates how a child's fantasied explanations of his abandonment contributed to repetitions of that abandonment. George, alias "Cool Cat", told his therapist: that he had a mother, but she had been shot and killed by his father. Cool Cat, however, had avenged his mother's death when he was 4 years old by killing his father himself. (p. 76) George saw himself as both a passive orphan and an active parricide. It was some time before interpretive work succeeded in helping the child to escape his passive-into-active compulsion to repeat his many losses.] It was observations like these which led me to suggest that adoption represented a significant challenge to normal psychological development (Brinich, 1980). To be adopted was to be "at risk," psychologically speaking. The psychiatric literature of the 1960s and '70s supported this point of view: adoptees were said to be very much over-represented in clinical samples (e.g., Schechter, 1960), and a variety of explanations for this (assumed) over- representation were proposed. Subsequently I had the good fortune to be able to put this clinically-based hypothesis to an empirical test. My wife Evelin and I examined the records of all patients -- inpatient and outpatient, adult and child -- who had been seen at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute (LPPI) over a ten-year period (Brinich & Brinich, 1982). We found that adoptees were somewhat over-represented amongst patients seen in the LPPI Children's Service: Adoptees made up 5 per cent of all new child registrants (inpatient and outpatient), while the general incidence of non-relative adopted children in California at that time was about 2.2 per cent. We were surprised, however, by two things. First, the over-representation of adoptees within the Children's Service was certainly not dramatic; and second, adoptees appeared to be somewhat under-represented amongst patients seen by the various adult services. There adoptees made up only 1.6 per cent of all new registrants. These findings called into question some of our assumptions about the psycho- pathogenic potential of adoption. It no longer appeared that adoption was always (or even frequently) associated with psychopathology. On the other hand, however, many detailed reports of individual cases clearly demonstrated that adoption could function as an organizing seed around which a pathological crystal could grow. Adoption in history, mythology, and literature We find some clues to the psychopathogenic potential of adoption in several of the fields which Freud (1926, p. 246) suggested should be included within a college of psychoanaly- sis (i.e., the history of civilization, mythology, and literature). History of civilization John Boswell, in his remarkable book, The kindness of strangers (1988), describes how unwanted children were dealt with in Western Europe from Roman times to the Renaissance. Boswell tells us that in ancient Rome there was no requirement that parents keep any of the children born to them. What parents did with their children was not a matter for the state; the principle of patriae potestas ruled. Since parents had no effective way of controlling fertility, they had to find ways to dispose of excess children. While infanticide was not prohibited, it also was not viewed favorably. Parents could, however, "rent" or "sell" a child; they could also "expose" an unwanted child in a public place, leaving the child's fate to the misericordia alienorum (or "kindness of strangers"). Whoever decided to take such a child and raise him might use him as a slave, a prostitute, or a household servant; alternatively, the child might be given the higher status of an alumnus or of an adopted child and family member. Boswell reports that a child who had been "exposed" did not usually die. Indeed, he might flourish; after all, the very founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were foundlings. During the "Dark Ages" unwanted children were often offered (as an oblatio) to religious communities; such a "donation" removed the children from competition for the family inheritance and at the same time ensured that someone would be available to pray for the souls of the parents who gave their children into religious life. Such donations of children were an important source of monastic manpower up through the 12th century A.D. Church law changed at that point; children who had been "donated" could elect to leave the religious life when they reached the age of twelve years. When many chose to leave, monasteries quickly began to refuse donations of children. When parents could no longer give unwanted children to the Church, they were forced to take more drastic measures. So it was that Pope Innocent III (1198-1216 A.D.), appalled by the number of infant bodies he saw floating in the Tiber (Simpson, 1987, p. 136), felt compelled to support the creation of the foundling hospitals which, from the 13th century onwards, became the "end of the line" for many unwanted children. Lest you think that the abandonment of children belongs only to ancient history, a bare two hundred years ago about one third of the children born in the diocese of Lyons were aban- doned. In 18th century Toulouse, one child in every four was known to have been abandoned. In early 19th century Florence, 43% of all babies presented for baptism were categorized as getatello (i.e., tossed out). The history of abandoned children in America goes back at least as far as the European colonization of the continent. The 17th and 18th centuries saw shiploads of abandoned children taken from the almshouses of major European cities to help populate the American colonies. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries so-called "orphan trains" transported nearly 150,000 unwanted children from eastern American cities to the rural midwest (Wheeler, 1983; Jackson, 1986). These orphan trains depended upon the fact that the children they carried represented real economic value: the children were expected to work. Child labor laws and compulsory education gradually removed these economic incentives and the orphan trains disappeared, just as the custom of oblatio had disappeared at the end of the 12th century. "Baby farms" sprang up -- homes which, for a fee of perhaps ten dollars, would take in an unwanted infant. The mortality rate in these homes was high and the New York Times noted, in 1873, that the "business of getting rid of other people's babies" was a very profitable one. Such data -- drawn from Roman times, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, colonial America, and from the past century of American history -- reveals that, throughout recorded history, some parents have abandoned some of their children (i.e., some children have been unwanted). Whether motivated by immediate economic necessity, by concern for the conservation of an estate, by hope that their abandoned child might find a kinder fate than they could offer, by shame, or by deeper, intrapsychic conflicts, some parents have left some of their children to the "kindness of strangers." Of course, abandonment may be a relatively benign outcome of parental ambivalence. In our clinical work we are repeatedly confronted by patients -- children and grown-up children -- who have been the targets of overt or covert parental attacks and seductions. [While we now accept the reality of "child abuse" it is sobering to recognize that a thorough description of the "battered child syndrome" did not appear in the professional literature until 1962 (Kempe et al., 1962), more than a hundred years after Charles Dickens had thrust this and other mistreatments of children upon his readers.] The abandonment and the abuse of children by their parents, both historical and contemporary, stand as evidence that we can ignore the reality of parental ambivalence toward children only if we are willing to blind ourselves to facts which stare us in the face. Mythology Adoption is a central element in many of our most venerable myths, from the ancient (e.g., Oedipus, Moses) to the modern (e.g., Tarzan, Superman, and Luke Skywalker). Adoption also plays a crucial role in many fairy tales: adoptive and/or step-parent relationships figure prominently in the stories of Hansel and Gretel, of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and of Cinderella. What is it about the adoption theme that attracts our attention? In each of these stories a child who was abandoned, rejected, or unwanted triumphs over an adversity which, often as not, is founded in parental ambivalence toward the child. This parental ambivalence, only slightly disguised, appears in dozens of fairy tales. In their book, The classic fairy tales, Opie & Opie (1974) note that, in fairy tales, The hero is almost invariably a young person, usually the youngest member of a family, and if not deformed or already an orphan, is probably in the process of being disowned or abandoned. (p. 15) Parental ambivalence often is stated openly, but most fairy tales end with an undoing of the murderous side of this ambivalence; the hero is happily reunited with his original family or integrated into a new, adoptive family (preferably as the new heir to the royal throne). An example of this rule is the tale of "Little Poucet" (whence comes the more familiar "Tom Thumb"). In that story, as told by Charles Perrault in his Histoires ou contes du temp passe of 1697 and retold by Opie & Opie (1974, pp. 130-136) , a woodchopper and his wife had seven sons; they "were very poor, and their seven children incommoded them very much, because not one of them was able to get his bread." The youngest son was very little, "no bigger when he was born than one's thumb, which made him be called Little Poucet . . . ." When famine came, "these poor people resolved to rid themselves of their children" (Perrault, cited in Opie & Opie, 1974, p. 130). They led the children into the forest and left them there. The boys eventually fell into the hands of an Ogre, who planned to kill, cook, and serve them for dinner. Fortunately Little Poucet was able to trick the Ogre into cutting the throats of his own seven daughters (thinking they were the seven boys). Little Poucet then tricked the Ogre's wife into giving him all of the Ogre's valuables. He then returned to his father's house: where it was impossible to express the joy they were all in at his return. He made the whole family very easy, bought places for his father and brothers; and by that means settled them very handsomely in the world, and in the mean time made his own court to perfection. (Perrault, cited in Opie & Opie, p. 136) Thus Little Poucet managed to turn aside or to undo all of the aggressive impulses which threatened to destroy the parent-child relationship. Literature Orphans and foundlings Fielding created Tom Jones; Dickens created David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickelby; Kipling created Kim and Mowgli; Twain created Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; J. M. Barrie created Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. These are but a few examples from amongst hundreds in which authors have used an orphaned or abandoned child as their protagonist. These stories, like the myths mentioned earlier, allow the unwanted child to survive and, often, to return victorious to his homeland. Adoption's popularity in literature and myth derives from its ability to help children manage the warring feelings of love and hate which they have toward their parents. At the same time it also gratifies trends related to infantile omnipotence; many of the above-mentioned foundlings are characters who would be happy to say, like a three-year-old of my acquaintance who had just mastered a new skill, "Nobody teached me to do it; I just learned it myself!" Thus the foundlings deny their vulnerable dependence upon grown-ups. There is, however, another important contributor to the popularity of adoption themes in myth and literature. Children's ambivalences are met, matched, and, in fact, preceded by the ambivalence of their parents. For children are never unmixed blessings; they are always competitors as well as heirs. Each of the foundling heroes mentioned earlier has been the target of adult aggression, whether it comes from Huck Finn's abusive, alcoholic father or from Peter Pan's nemesis, Captain Hook. It may be that the dependent vulnerability of children acts as a seductive enticement to parental instinctual impulses, both sexual and aggressive. Children are easily-available targets for pressures that have yielded only grudgingly to the demands of civilization. Books about adoption There is another and very different literary genre which centers around adoption: Books created to instruct children about adoption. These number in the dozens, but the classic volume is that of The Chosen Baby (Wasson, 1939). Beginning in 1939, it was used for a quarter of a century to "explain" adoption to young, adopted children. I quote from the book jacket and from the Foreword: The Chosen Baby is the first book to present the facts of adoption in story-form that all children will enjoy and it solves beautifully the first great problem of foster parents in relation to their children. . . . The Chosen Baby is intended for parents of young children, who wish to make the first explanation of adoption as happy as it is true. The following pr‚cis of the story will illustrate what this explanation does and does not accomplish for the adopted child and the adoptive parents. [Quotations in the pr‚cis are taken from Wasson, 1939.] A happily married Man and Wife had no children of their own; so they decided to adopt. They called up a Home and asked for help in finding a "lovely, healthy baby boy." A lady from the Home visited the couple's home "to make sure that the Chosen Baby would live in a happy, light, clean home." The couple waited for a long time. Then, suddenly, they were asked to come to the Home to chose one of three available healthy baby boys. The couple chose the second baby they saw. They went home and prepared a room for the baby, hired a Nannie, and arranged a family reception for the baby, who was named after his uncle, Peter. Peter grew well and the couple decided "It would be good for Peter to have a baby sister." They asked the Home to find them a baby girl. Again they had to wait, but finally a call came from the Home: "I have a lovely baby girl who . . . will be a good sister for Peter." The couple and Peter went to see the baby; Peter decided it was his baby and he gladly helped to care for her. She was named Mary, after a grandmother. She and Peter are lovely children and they both "like to hear the story of how they were adopted. And the Man and his Wife, and Peter, and Mary are all happy together." Happy the story may be; true it is not. First of all, it paints a picture of the adoption process which was probably never true (i.e., that the adoptive parents were given a choice of several different children). What is more, the explanation of how the choice was made is magical and seemingly impulsive; it would be hard to give such a choice the sense of permanence which we would wish for the adoptive child and his family. In addition, there are some huge gaps in this story. There is no mention of the biological parents or of why they decided to give up their baby. There is no mention of why the adoptive parents were unable to have biological children. There is no mention of what happened to the other two babies. And so on. The story goes to great pains to integrate the adopted child immediately into his adoptive family. He is named after his uncle; he is immediately shown off to the uncles, aunts, and grandparents. The wish to deny the adoptive child's "different" status is palpable and is re-emphasized in the story when the adoptive parents decide to adopt a second child, a daughter. After a wait of a year, they get what they asked for. This child is named after her grandmother. There is another family gathering to greet the new family member. And the story ends with the traditional fairy tale ending: "and they all lived happily ever after" (in other words). This story and others like it can best be understood as a defense against one side of the ambivalence that is part and parcel of adoption. All the "negative" elements have been removed and we are left with a very sanitized version of reality. Central to our interest is the fact that this story avoids the crucial fact that the Chosen Baby is, first of all, an Unwanted Baby. Fortunately other books have appeared on the scene which deal more realistically with some of the psychic tensions which are highlighted by adoption. One of the most useful of these, for clinicians, is Jill Krementz's (1982) How it feels to be adopted. Krementz pairs photographs of adopted adolescents with their own first-person accounts of some of their feelings. Here is what an adolescent boy, adopted as a child, says about his childhood worries about being gotten rid of for a second time. Jake (13 years old) Another thing that happened when I was younger is that around Christmas- time, if I had been really bad, I used to worry, Oh dear, Santa Claus isn't going to bring me any presents, he's going to put coals in my stockings, and worst of all, Mom's going to take me back to the adoption agency. Of course my parents told me it wasn't true, but I still thought it. (Krementz, 1982, p. 4) The accounts given by Krementz's adolescents also demonstrate that the lack of knowledge about biological parents does not stop adoptees from creating elaborate fantasies about these unknown yet crucial people. Philip (15 years old) The best thing about being adopted is that I can have wonderful fantasies about my birthmother. And if you're a dreamer, which I can be, your mother can become anyone you want her to be. I happen to like opera a lot, so for a while my real mother was Maria Callas. She was such a strange and wonderful lady, and I thought it was neat to have such a bizarre and exotic mother. She's dead now. She never found out what a crazy son she had! (Krementz, 1982, p. 67) Jack (12 years old) I've always had a picture in my mind of what my birthmother looks like. She's a little chubby, about thirty-seven years old, and she's wearing a mink coat. I think I saw her once on Seventy-ninth and Broadway three years ago. I dream about her from time to time. She never changes--never gets older or anything like that. (Krementz, 1982, p. 69) The fantasies adoptees construct about their biological parents often are reparative in nature. That is, they include some attempt to soften the impact of having been relinquished. Adoptees imagine, for example, that their biological mothers miss them. Carla (12 years old) There is one time when I do always think about my biological mother, and that's on my birthday. I've never skipped a year without wondering, How does she feel on this day? Does she think of me, or does she just pretend that I was never born and it's any other day? Is she sad, or is she happy? I hope that she does think about me, and I hope she wonders what I'm like, how I am, what I look like, how I act, and things like that. I would imagine that she would remember and think about me and that it might be a hard time for her. (Krementz, 1982, p. 8) The fact that the adopted child has two sets of parents makes it relatively easy for him or her to direct loving and hating feelings toward different sets of parents. Love may be focused upon the adoptive parents while hate is directed outwardly, toward the biological parents, or vice versa. While this might seem an attractive solution to the problem of warring feelings of love and hate, it avoids the difficult task of learning to integrate love and hate and to live with people towards whom one has both of those feelings. Krementz's adolescents tell us how being adopted affects their own struggles with ambivalence and how their adoptive status provides a temptation to use a kind of splitting in the management of their feelings of love and hate. Carla (12 years old) I don't think about being adopted all that much. Once in a while I do, and that's usually when I'm mad at my mother. Sometimes when I'm really mad, I'll daydream about what it would be like to be living with my real mother -- with the lady I was born from. I don't usually say anything; I just keep it in my head. But I don't really think of my birthmother as my real mother, because it's the mother I have now who takes care of me when I'm sick and who's always there when I need her. She acts just like a real mother to me. (Krementz, 1982, p. 8) Sue (13 years old) [There have been times] when I've gotten really mad at my parents and have felt like just turning around and saying, "I wish I wasn't adopted by you! If you yell at me as much as you do, and if you don't love me, then why did you adopt me? Why don't you just give me up for adoption again?" I've never said it, because I know it would hurt them, and me, too, but I've sure thought it from time to time. (Krementz, 1982, p. 31) This cursory review of data taken from history, mythology, and literature can be summarized quite briefly: On the one hand, Not all children are wanted; and all children are sometimes unwanted. On the other hand, All children sometimes repudiate their parents. The recognition of these realities opens the door to further understanding of both (1) the psychopathogenic potential of adoption and (2) the importance of the adoption theme in normal development. Some neglected complementarities in drives and object relations as they appear in the Oedipal myth and in the Oedipus complex Freud opened our eyes to the fact that children have powerful "drives" (especially sexual and aggressive, though recent research -- e.g., Emde [1988a, 1988b] -- has broadened the range of such drives beyond the realms of sexuality and aggression) which are often directed toward their parents. In the analysis of his adult patients he was able to trace the fantasies, wishes, and impulses which expressed these drives back into the early years of their psychic lives. Freud used this knowledge of infantile, unconscious impulses to illuminate the meaning of symptoms and of some normal developmental phenomena. His essay on "Family romances" (1909) is an example of the latter; there Freud noted it is a commonplace event that, as the latency child begins to separate himself from his parents and becomes critical of them, he develops the idea that he is a stepchild or an adopted child. That is, he imagines that his parents are not his parents, but surrogates or impostors. This fantasy of being an adoptee often moves one step further, to the idea that the child's real parents are nobler than those with whom he feels he has been left. Freud explained that such fantasies of adoption allow us to reclaim early images of our parents at a time when we wish to discard the parents we now see. Fantasies of adoption allow us to express both love and hate, at the same time, and to direct these feelings toward different aspects of our parents, these aspects being represented by the two sets of parents included within the "family romance." Given Freud's interest in and familiarity with Greek mythology it is rather remarkable that he gave little emphasis to the fantasies and impulses which parents direct toward their children (both intrapsychically and externally in the real world). Greek mythology includes many stories in which parents kill and even eat their own children (as in Perrault's tale of Little Poucet, cited above). Freud was able to see how sons might want to kill their father -- and, indeed, he often felt that this wish was being actualized as various of his "sons" -- Adler, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi, and others -- broke away from him. But he did not acknowledge -- or at least did not emphasize -- that parents often direct their own aggressive and sexual impulses toward their children. This neglect on Freud's part is all the more surprising when we review the myth which Freud made into a cornerstone of his understanding of intrapsychic life: that of Oedipus. The oracle at Delphi had predicted that the child of Laius and Jocasta (king and queen of Thebes) would kill his father and marry his mother. The royal parents therefore pierced their infant son's feet with a thong, tied them together, and left him to die on a mountainside. A shepherd found the boy, released him, and took him to Corinth. There he was adopted by the king and queen of that city, Polybus and Merope; they named the child Oedipus, "swollen foot." They did not tell him that he was adopted. When Oedipus reached manhood he visited Delphi and was told by the oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Thinking that this meant Polybus and Merope, he fled Corinth and traveled to Thebes. En route he encountered a group of men, one of whom struck him and forced him from the road. He returned the blow and killed the man -- his father, Laius (unknown to him). When Oedipus reached Thebes he found the city in terror of the Sphinx, who was killing the inhabitants one by one. Oedipus vanquished the Sphinx when he solved her riddle; he was given the throne in gratitude since the king (Laius) had been killed. Oedipus took not only the throne but also the dead king's wife, Jocasta (his mother), as wife. And it was not until many years later -- when Oedipus and Jocasta already had four children of their own (Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, and Ismene) -- that the story began to unravel into Sophocles' famous tragedy. Oedipus sought to discover and to punish the murderer of King Laius. He failed to heed the aged, blind Tiresias, who warned him, "You are yourself the murderer you seek." When the truth finally broke upon him, he put out his own eyes, condemned by his own edict and by the gods. What I wish to point out here is that Oedipus was a victim before he became an agent (cf. Emde, 1989); his parents tried to kill him when he was still an infant. [Taylor (1988) has discussed this point in an article entitled, "Oedipus' parents were child abusers."] When Oedipus fled Corinth his conscious wish was to escape the fate which had been revealed to him by the Delphic oracle -- i.e., that he was to kill his father and marry his mother. I am suggesting that Oedipus' flight from Corinth was equally an unconscious recognition of the aggressive potential of parental ambivalence -- misplaced, in Oedipus' case, upon his Corinthian adoptive parents. Oedipus knew this aggression well, for he already bore the marks of it in his feet and in his name. It is my contention that the "family romance" and the myth of Oedipus both are understood only partly if we see them as evidence of a child's ambivalence toward his or her parents. It is equally important to recognize the unconscious impulses which originate in parents and which then mesh, in a complementary way, with those of their offspring. Part of what leads children to fear their potential as Oedipal competitors is their awareness, which they share with their parents, that the children are the successors and heirs who -- if things go well -- will bury the parents. Laius hoped to cheat fate by killing his son. Oedipus hoped to cheat fate by fleeing Corinth. Neither felt confident of his ability to control the aggressive and sexual impulses which are a normal part of the parent/child relationship. I would further contend that our understanding of the "family romance" and of the myth of Oedipus are enriched when we apply each of the "four psychologies of psychoanalysis" (Pine, 1988, 1989, 1990) to the phenomena of ambivalence as they appear upon the stage of adoption. The drives are molded and channeled in the context of ego development and human relationships. Ambivalence -- the coexistence of impulses of both love and hate, directed toward the same people -- is a normal part of human intrapsychic life. Adoption offers some special opportunities for developmental anomalies in the management of ambivalence. In the first instance, adoption may be associated with distortions in early parent-child "attachments," distortions which may then affect many succeeding aspects of both intrapsychic object relations and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the existence of two sets of parents -- about whom both the child and the parents have fantasies -- facilitates the use of defenses such as splitting, externalization, and projection. The fact that the child was indeed "unwanted" before he or she was "wanted" provides a foothold for problems in self-esteem. The adopted child's actual separation from its biological parents may complicate the negotiation of the developmental steps for which Mahler coined the term "separation-individuation" (Mahler, Pine & Bergman, 1975). I hope, however, that the existence of these "sticking points" associated with adoption will not distract the reader from what I have tried to make a central point in this paper: That the ambivalences encountered upon the stage of adoption are simply special instances of a general phenomenon which is part of every parent-child relationship. Conclusion Adoption and its psychological vicissitudes often have been considered a "specialist" topic within psychoanalytic circles. The present paper argues that adoption fantasies and myths are important vehicles for the expression of normal child-parent and parent-child ambivalences. It also argues that the conflicts of ambivalence which are highlighted in adoptees and their parents (both biological and adoptive) exist in all parent/child relationships. Our tendency to focus upon the adopted child's intrapsychic struggles, allowing (biological and adoptive) parental intrapsychic struggles to remain in the background, is reminiscent of Freud's focus upon Oedipus and his relative neglect of Laius and Jocasta, Polybus and Merope. Psychoanal- ysts must not neglect the fact that each of the participants in the Oedipal drama has an intrapsy- chic life, and that these individual intrapsychic lives interact with each other. Winnicott said "There is no such thing as a baby", thus emphasizing that babies cannot be understood without reference to their caretakers. This paper argues that Oedipus cannot be understood without reference to Laius and Jocasta; the fantasies and impulses of children cannot be understood without reference to the reciprocal fantasies and impulses of their parents. The child's idea that he or she has been "adopted", which appears in the "family romance" fantasy, represents an attempt to deal with the love and hate which are both part of every parent/child relationship. Parental ambivalences, which find their more extreme and pathological expressions in abandonment and abuse, complement those of the child. The "family romance", which appears to be a solo creation by the child, is in fact a joint parent/child project, a project which expresses mutual and complementary wishes to run away from the unconscious sexual and aggressive wishes which periodically threaten to emerge in every parent/child relationship. Our clinical work with adoptees often provides dramatic illustrations of the strength of unconscious impulses -- both sexual and aggressive -- and of the ways in which these impulses affect self- and object-representations, as well as object relationships. It is common, however, for us to focus our attention on the adopted child, just as Freud focused his attention on Oedipus. When we widen our view, however, we quickly see -- as Brandt Steele (1992) recently pointed out in his plenary address to the American Psychoanalytic Association -- that real, actual violations of Oedipal taboos usually begin with the adult participants (i.e., with Laius and Jocasta). Adoption has provided, in one form or another and for centuries on end, a practical way of limiting parental aggression against children. Over the same centuries it also has provided a convenient vehicle for childhood fantasies, in the form of the "family romance", when Oedipal impulses threatened eruption. It is precisely because adoption is well-suited to these multiple functions that authors and dramatists repeatedly have turned to adoption when they wished to wrestle with parental and filial loves and hatreds across the generations. This paper suggests that adoption is also of special value to psychoanalysts. When adoption is associated with psychopathology, it provides some dramatic illustrations of the impact of ambivalence upon intrapsychic life. But adoption is also part of normality; and it is in that realm that it provides -- via the "family romance" and its many literary incarnations -- some peerless views of the adaptive struggle between love and hate which has such fateful consequences for both parents and children. References Boswell, J. (1988). The kindness of strangers: The abandonment of children in western Europe from late antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books. Brinich, P. M. (1980). 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