On being dropped and picked up: adopted children and their internal objects

Summary — English:

Edwards explores how early abandonment, deprivation, and disrupted attachment can shape the internal object world of adopted children. Using the psychotherapy of a six-year-old adopted boy, she shows how experiences of being repeatedly “dropped” can become internalized as expectations of rejection and loss. The child may then recreate these experiences through aggression, hypervigilance, impulsivity, and testing whether others will abandon him again. Drawing on Winnicott, Edwards argues that the child may have missed the gradual disillusionment necessary for developing stable experiences of a loving but separate object. A consistent therapeutic relationship can provide a new secure base in which traumatic internal objects can gradually be modified and integrated.