The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child

this book is great for individuals or families who have struggled or are struggling with adoption issues.

I don't know how I missed this book for more than a decade, but it is still timely and insightful, explaining many things about the adoptee's experience which didn't make sense when trying to analyze the experience emotionally or intellectually. A must read for any member of the adoption triad.

I feel that this is a must read for everybody adoptee, birth parent and adoptive parent and ever those that were just given away.

Reading this book is like peering through a window into the secret inner life of the adoptee, which makes it an excellent book both for adoptees and for those who are close to them. Since some of the issues Verrier addresses in this book are common to many people who were not adopted, such as people who were placed in incubators at birth or people who grew up with alcoholic parents, this is also an excellent book for people outside of the book's target audience. In very accessible language Verrier argues that much of the perplexing and often maladjusted and maladjustive behaviour exhibited by adoptees is caused by the trauma they suffered upon separation from their birth mothers. According to Verrier, the effects of that trauma are made worse by the fact that, for the most part, those effects are unrecognized not only by society as a whole, but also by the adoptees themselves. Adoptees whose trauma goes unrecognized are not able to grieve the loss of their birth mothers, which leaves them alone to struggle with the potentially debilitating issues that arise from their unresolved grief. One of the most important functions this book performs is to acknowledge and thereby validate the often silent suffering of adoptees, which may then allow adoptees to begin the process of healing both themselves and their relationships with others. This process begins with the recognition of Verrier's critical insight into the fact that adoptive families are very different from biological ones, and may proceed not only with the help of some of the practical suggestions Verrier puts forward in this book, but also with the help of her more in-depth study of the same issues in the sequel to this book, _Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up_. For anybody who is interested in reading more about the false selves that Verrier says adoptees often live with, I highly recommend R. D. Laing's _The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness_. Similarly, for anybody who is interested in reading more about the significance of the family for one's sense of one's own identity, and about the significance of one's relationships with others more generally, I highly recommend chapter four of John Russon's _Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life_.

The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child

I lost count on how many times I said "Just like me" while reading this book.

It should be a required read for any prospective adoptive parent and for all who councel adoptee's and their adopters. Any adoptee who cannot see themselves and how they sometimes feel and behave in this book are in deep denial!

Thanks for the insight! I'm not crazy, I'm adopted! Whew!!