Product Description

The author of the "adoptees'" bible--Lost and Found--explores for the first time the inner psychological world of adopted people and shows how their search for biological roots can be a journey towards wholeness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233209 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Lifton has written before on this highly charged subject ( Lost and Found and Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter ), but this is a more profound investigation of the trauma she sees as occurring when a child is separated from his or her birth mother and is brought up by people not of his or her blood. Lifton is for "open" adoption--meaning, to her, not only that the adoptee should have a chance to find out about his or her birth mother, but preferably that both sets of parents should get to know each other. She discourses at length, with reference to myth, legend, folklore, science, psychiatry, as well as to many personal experiences, about the crippling effect of the loss of the birth mother on the adoptee's sense of self; she even cites evidence showing that adoptive sons are more likely than natural ones to murder their parents. Despite one chapter (out of 17) devoted to him, the father's role seems little considered, that of the mother expanded to awe-inspiring proportions. And no attention is paid to the many cases in which the birth mother would not have been the ideal parent, despite the almost mystical qualities with which the author endows her. An eloquent book, but only one side of an argument in which two reasonable sides exist.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews and over 20 questionnaires, Lifton details the psychological stages and problems of those who have been adopted. An adoptee herself, Lifton has written Lost and Found ( LJ 4/1/79) and Twice Born ( LJ 9/1/75). Here she argues that it is crucial for adoptees to know as much as possible about their backgrounds in order to avoid the trauma that adoption can cause. According to the author, "the secret in today's adoptive family is not that the child is adopted but who the child is." An extensive appendix of resources including networks, support groups, periodicals, and recommended reading is particularly impressive. This is a thoughtful and useful work for all those with questions about the psychological legacy of adoption. Recommended where demand warrants.
- January Adams, ODSI Research Lib., Raritan, N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In children's books and adult nonfiction, Lifton has eloquently advocated open adoption. Her new book draws on interviews with adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents, as well as Lifton's own experiences and her counseling practice with adult adoptees, to describe the nature of "cumulative adoption trauma"--the complex tangle of grief, pain, and confusion that closed adoption forces adoptive children and both sets of parents to suffer in "a conspiracy of silence"--and the healing integration that can result if this echoing silence is broken and adoptees gain access to both strands of their heritage. There is a strong backlash against the open adoption movement that seeks to preserve adoption secrecy by denying Lifton's central argument--that adoptive children need to know where they come from in order to construct a healthy personal identity. Ultimately, this is the familiar nature vs. nurture battle: Lifton insists that because closed adoption denies the significance--even the reality--of the adopted child's biological roots, it sows denial and lies at the heart of even the most nurturing adoptive family. Includes resource lists, recommended readings, and notes. Mary Carroll

Customer Reviews

Context is everything.
Those of us who were adopted in the 60s or before may well never have had our experiences validated. We waste energy we could put into healing wondering, "What's wrong with me?" because we were taught adoption makes no difference, and that asking questions about our origins would be disloyal. Adoptive parents of the same era may well be wondering where they went wrong in raising their adopted children; I know mine have. They didn't do anything wrong, they just weren't given the tools they needed to raise a child they did not give birth to.

For people adopted in the era after books like The Adoption Triangle and The Primal Wound were published, this Journey may seem like wallowing or old hat, but this book was invaluable to me. Reading it and dealing with the feelings it provoked was step one on my journey to healing. This book gave me the courage to find my birth mother. When I was a teenager, the birthmother search was unthinkable, open adoptions didn't exist, and the epithet b*stard was anything but a badge of pride.

If you read this and feel it doesn't apply to you because being adopted doesn't matter, please leave a little space in your head and heart to consider that it just might matter a little bit. Try reading it again in a year or two. If it still doesn't apply to you, count yourself lucky, and have compassion for those of us who feel we were traumatized by adoption.

The Quest For Wholeness is one we all must undertake. Best of luck to you on yours.

Relief
I find it hard to describe the impact that Ms. Lifton's book has had on me. I spent many nights crying and furiously scribbling in my journal because of the emotional tidal waves that would consume me as I read Journey of the Adopted Self. I read this book seven years after my reunion with my birthparents, and I only wish I had known about it back then. I would very much recommend this book to anyone who has been adopted, as it will help to fit together the jagged pieces of your heart and mind. I can only say "thank you" to Ms. Lifton for writing her insightful and compassionate books; Journey of the Adopted Self is one of the reasons that I am a functional human being today.

Insightful and inspiring, a book you can't put down!
Journey of the Adopted Self is truly an inspiring book that spoke not only to me the adult, but also me the child. I am an adoptee who didn't think that adoption affected my overall self until I began to read about *me* between the pages of this book. Identifying with and understanding the psyche of a baby separated from its mother early, I realized that I had always wanted to be cradled when things were difficult in life, that I always wanted to meet someone who could take care of me but was afraid of rejection, and my "natural" instinct to distance my adoptive mother from me may have been my reaction to being separated at birth from my natural mother. This book also described my adoptive brother who seems "stuck" in his evolving into an adult. As I have begun a reunion with my birthmother, my adoptive mother and I have become closer, and with the help of this book, I've been able to be exposed to other points of view objectively instead of just reacting to situations. I truly feel that this is a book that will help adoptees not only cope with the issues of being adopted, but will help heal the invisible scars on our hearts