Apego y adolescentes adoptados

Attachment happens with parental reference figures throughout childhood. Adopted minors have various parental figures, and they have often suffered from situations of negligence or abuse that shape negative representations of attachment. Adoption is a reparative process that encourages positive changes in the adopted child’s way of bonding. The purpose of this paper is to learn about the attachment styles of these adopted adolescents several years
after being adopted, using Corman’s Patte Noire test.

Our study was conducted with a sample of 30 adolescents, between the ages of 12 and 18, adoptees in Spain. The criterion for inclusion was having been adopted more than four years ago, while the criterion for exclusion was suffering from serious mental disorders.

The result shows that secure attachment were in 38% of adolescents assessed and the insecure attachment in 64%. We had also observed that the experience of abandonment by the biological parents has created feelings of loss and rejection in many subjects of our sample, even eight to seventeen years after adoption. Note that these feelings make it difficult to elaborate the grief over the loss of their biological parents, hindering to develop secure attachment between the youth and their adoptive parents. They will need more time and possibly specific support. The use of projective methods helps us to understand better adopted adolescents psychological needs and properly design professional interventions