The cost of intercountry adoption

Résumé 0

Having conducted multiple psychoanalytical family therapies with families who have adopted abroad, the author wonders about the involvement of money in the creation of a new family. Even relative wealth appears here as a facilitator during the initial process: lacking for one of the parties (biological parents, orphanage, country), it is sufficiently present in the adoptive parents, so the exchange should be satisfactory. However many guilt-inducing fantasies infiltrate the process (purchase, kidnapping, theft). If they are fought by rival fantasies of altruism or salvation, parent-child neo-links remain durably tainted by the preceding contents circulating within them, which induce feelings of hatred and punitive behaviors. The later the adoption, the more dangerous these pitfalls. Psychoanalytic family therapy can moderate the destructive effects of this.