15

The strength of adoptive filiation is gauged when tested by the changes in identity that occur during adolescence. The parental function of containing and transforming adolescent anxieties is much called upon. The path to the child-turned-adolescent is then re-examined to test the historicizing role of the couple’s original imagination. We will discuss the reasons for the psychic vulnerability of adoptive filiation, and the similarities between the filiating process and the adolescent process. On the parents’ side, one difficulty is the inability to make a connection between the child in his pre-adoptive history marked by abandonment and affective deficiencies, and the continuity of their own family history.