The author encourages therapists to approach parents as individuals (not just as parents), and to maintain the same professional perspective in dealing with them that informs the rest of their work. Illustrative case material draws on a considerable range of presenting pictures, from parents who are themselves therapists to those who have no frame of reference for treatment, from parents who seek help when a healthy youngster hits a developmental impasse to those whose lives are shattered ...

Adoption is a transformational process bringing parenthood to those who long for but cannot bear children and giving stranded children home, family, and their place in the world. But every adoption is preceded and followed by its story and when these stories are told in the offices of psychotherapists we begin to understand the impact of adoption in all its complexity. We learn from parents how their quest to have and raise a child has played out in real life, and what shadows might have f...