The Psychodynamics of Adoptees and Adoptive
Parents: From ?Fats? in the Novel ‘Casual Vacancy’
Parents: From ?Fats? in the Novel ‘Casual Vacancy’
Geon Ho Bahn, Mi Ae Oh, and Soo Hyun Oh
1Department of Psychiatry, Kyung Hee University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
2Department of Psychiatry, Kyung Hee University Hospital, Seoul, Korea
3Department of Life Sciences, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
2Department of Psychiatry, Kyung Hee University Hospital, Seoul, Korea
3Department of Life Sciences, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.- Abstract
- Adoption is a legal procedure through which individuals (usually a couple) are given the rights and responsibility to raise a child/children who is/are not biologically related to them. An increase in the number of adoptive families is typically followed by increased chances of encountering problems related to adoption in psychiatric practice. When working with adoption-related issues, the therapist needs to resolve many issues. He/she needs to deal with not just the adoptee’s but also the biological and adoptive parents’ grief reaction caused by feelings of loss; he/she needs to develop a sense of attachment between the adoptive parents and the adoptees; and he/she needs to help the adopted children establish a positive identity, especially in adolescence. In this study, we examined various considerations related to adoption and analyzed the psychology and conflicts of the adoptee and adoptive parents. The subject of the analysis was Fats, an adoptee in Joan Rowling’s 2012 novel Casual Vacancy. In the novel, Fats and his father, who is a high school teacher suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, fail to develop an appropriate attachment. When Fats enters high school, he starts exhibiting problematic behaviors such as smoking cigarettes and marijuana, having sex with his girlfriend, and bullying. Adoptees and their families have a different start from conventional families. In order to become a true family, adoptees and their adoptive parents must go through their own “gestational period.” The adoptees need to establish a positive relationship with their adoptive and birth parents. If adoptees show deviant behaviors during adolescence, the behavior must be viewed in light of the fact that they have been adopted. Identity issues are a new challenge for the adoptees-adoptive parents-birth parents triad and also for the psychotherapists.
- Keywords : Adoption · Deviation · Behavior · Attachment · Psychotherapy.
- October 2024, 35 (4)
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