Counseling

A friend once asked me how I became involved in the adoption field. I responded that it was easy. I was born into it. I was adopted.

My friend's face registered surprise and embarrassment. I was at the same time an authority on the psychology of the adopted child and the abandoned child ― both in one. I could have responded to her question in a different way ― that I had been working on the subject of adoption since separation from my birth mother, though not on a conscious level until I began writing about growing up adopted in Twice Born. My memoir helped me to articulate the journey I took from the lone adopted child, who didn't know where she came from, to the intrepid adult who dared to find out.

I was amazed at the number of adoptees who wrote me that I had told their story. I realized that though we were not from the same family, we were from the same closed family system ― a socially engineered arrangement that was designed to cut us off psychologically, as well as legally, from our genetic and cultural heritage. And so I decided to research and write about the experiences of adoptees, birth mothers, and adoptive parents in order to understand how the closed adoption system impacted their psychology.

In Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, my next book, I described how the closed adoption system forces everyone in the adoption triangle to live a double life. In order to survive psychologically, the adoptee has to live "as if" born to the adoptive parents. The birth mother has to go on with her life "as if" she never had a child. And the adoptive parents have to live "as if" this is their biological child.

I came to see this mechanism of doubling that everyone did as a form of dissociation. When you dissociate, you split off the part of the self that is too painful to deal with. For the adopted child, this means splitting off the grief and loss and the need to know one's heritage. When years later the dissociation wears off, and adoptees go in search of the original mother to learn the circumstances of their birth and relinquishment, all of those once split off emotions are released. The unresolved grief and anger can be overwhelming.

Understanding the survival mechanism of dissociation helped answer the question that I and so many adoptees had once we woke up from what I call the Great Sleep. How had we so passively accepted that we were not to know the mother and father who gave us life, and to learn the circumstances of our birth and relinquishment.

In order to help the many people who read my books and came to me for advice and support, I got a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, and opened a practice doing therapy with all members of the triad. My next book, Journey of the Adopted Self, was influenced by Erik Erikson's identity theory, which stresses the importance of continuity with one's past in the service of one's future. In my therapy practice, I also make use of theories of the self and concepts of trauma, for I believe that all members of the adoption triangle have been traumatized by their losses.

Adoptees

I see adopted people who are in a life crisis of one kind or another, due to the breakup of a relationship, the loss of a job, an adoptive parent's death. Many come when they are in the throes of search and reunion. They are struggling to deal with the tumultuous emotions that are surfacing, as well as with the complexity of forming a relationship with the birth mother, birthfather, or siblings. Their task is to reclaim those split off feelings and emotions and integrate them into the adult self.

For both the adoptee and birthmother, there is the bittersweet realization that what is lost can be recovered, but never in the form in which it was lost. The birth mother cannot have back the baby she gave up; the adoptee cannot have back the original mother that he lost. Their reunion will be influenced by the way the adoptee and birth mother have coped with their trauma and dissociation over the years. It is not easy. Going through reunion is like experiencing a tornado that swirls you around and then sets you down in a foreign land from which you have to slowly and painfully make your way back to a place that you can call your own.

Birth Mothers

The birth mothers I work with are often trying to gain understanding of the adoptee who has found them, or whom they have found. As their dissociation wears off, they find themselves overwhelmed with grief, as well as with guilt and anger at having had no support to keep their baby. They need insight into their own emotional turmoil as they are swept back into that traumatic time when they lost not only their baby, and their status as a mother, but also the baby's father. They struggle to understand why the adoptee often withdraws for a while after the initial contact, or becomes angry and controlling, and how to maneuver when this happens.

Adoptive Parents

Adoptive parents who are having trouble with their rebellious teenager or young adult, get in touch with me. I see the adoptee and the parents separately, and then together, as we try to articulate what everyone is feeling so that the barriers that separate them can come down. This often means letting the adoptee express his sense of frustration and powerlessness over not knowing where he comes from. And it means helping the adoptive parents understand that they will not lose their child should he meet the birth parents, but rather they will become closer .

I also see adoptive parents who have young children and are facing the question of when and what to tell. Other parents who started out in the closed adoption system are looking for ways to open their adoption once their child begins asking questions, or acting out. Those adoptive parents who have already met the birth mother in what is called "semi–open adoption," but what I call "semi–closed," come with questions about how to proceed with the birth mother as the child grows.

Ghosts

Therapists often ask me to supervise their work with adopted patients. I try to make the adoptee visible to them, and to do this I call in the ghosts that accompany everyone in the triad. It is not possible to see the adoptee, the adoptive parents or the birth mother without seeing the ghosts that accompany them.

The Ghost Kingdom

All of these ghosts fluctuate between dispensing comfort and wreaking havoc in the psyche. Too dangerous to be allowed into consciousness, they are usually banished into what I call The Ghost Kingdom. It is an awesome sphere, located in everyone’s psychic reality. We can think of it as an Alternate Reality. In the past, one could only enter one’s Ghost Kingdom through fantasy, but now in this Age of Search and Reunion, the ghosts are being morphed into real life people who inhabit the real world.

In my clinical practice, I try to make everyone aware of the ghosts who influence much of their behavior, as well as the trauma they’ve experienced, and the dissociation they have done.

Request an Appointment

I see clients in my home office in Cambridge, Ma, and in New York City. I also do telephone counseling with triad members across the country.

To request an appointment, please send email to info@bjlifton.com or leave a phone message at my Wellfleet, MA office: (508) 349-3544 . Or use the contact form.

Lectures & Seminars

I have lectured and given professional workshops on the psychology of the adopted child, the adoptive parents and the birth parents in this country and abroad.



Web Desgined by BoldEverything Interactive