http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/studies/SchechterOAC.htm
Marshall D. Schechter, "Observations on Adopted Children," 1960
Marshall Schechter, a psychiatrist in private practice in Beverly
Hills, California, re****ted in 1960 that adoptees were 100 times more
likely than non-adoptees to present a range of serious emotional
problems. Like a number of other contributions to the psychopathology
literature, Schechter's re****t was based on a tiny number of cases. He
presented information about 120 children seen in his practice between
1948 and 1953, of whom exactly sixteen (or 13.3 percent) were adopted.
Since adoptees numbered less than one-tenth of one percent in the
general population, adopted children were greatly over-represented in
his practice. Schechter's friend, Povl Toussieng, a child psychiatrist
at the famous Menninger Clinic, had also told him that up to one-third
of all children seen as outpatients at the clinic were adopted.
Schechter's own observations, confirmed by a trusted colleague, were
the basis for his conclusion. Adoption had an emotionally damaging
impact on child development.
What exactly was it about adoption that caused problems? According to
Schechter, the answer could be found in the psychoanalytic theory that
"object relations" (the first and closest ties formed between infants
and the adults who care for them) were crucial determinants of
personhood. Children could not cope with the knowledge that they had
been rejected by birth parents and no amount of reassurance that their
adoptive parents loved and wanted them could make up for the "severe
narcissistic injury" that adoption inflicted. Each and every one of
his sixteen cases illustrated "how the idea of adoption had woven
itself into the framework of the child's personality configuration."
Telling children they were adopted was mandatory, Schechter agreed,
but it also precipitated psychological difficulties. Carefully timing
and managing the details of telling could help mitigate the resulting
problems. (Later studies challenged this view. See, for example, the
excerpt from Benson Jaffee and David Fanshel, How They Fared in
Adoption.)
Schechter was not the first person to suggest that adoption posed
intrinsic psychological risks. As early as 1937, psychiatrist David
Levy presented case histories showing that adoptees suffered from
"primary affect hunger," a term he used to describe what is now called
attachment disorder. A number of other clinicians in the U.S. and
Britain published re****ts in the 1940s and 1950s about the deleterious
consequences of growing up "without genealogy." It was the boldness of
Schechter's claim that adopted children were much more likely to
become neurotic and psychotic that galvanized helping professionals
and therapeutic approaches to adoption. It also generated a great deal
of controversy. H. David Kirk, author of Shared Fate, called
Schechter's study "spurious." Many other researchers were equally
skeptical that adoption was the sort of risk factor Schechter
maintained it was.
Schechter's methodology drew the most fire. Small numbers of detailed
case histories had long been standard features of medical research and
psychiatrists renowned for their contributions to developmental
theory, including Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, relied on them
extensively. But psychologists and social workers with training in
scientific research methods insisted that Schechter's sample was far
too small to be representative and disparaged his crude and inaccurate
statistical calculations. His research design was so flawed as to be
hopelessly unreliable.
Schechter responded by sending a questionnaire to members of the
Southern California Psychiatric Society and various regional
institutions. A follow-up re****t presented empirical data showing that
adoptees showed up in clinical populations everywhere at much higher
than average rates.
Schechter's account of the damage that adoption did to children was
vigorously contested during the 1960s. Today, it is widely accepted by
parents and professionals who agree that attachment and loss are at
the heart of what makes adoption a distinctive and difficult
experience. This consensus was efficiently summarized in a book that
Schechter co-edited with developmental psychologist David Brodzinsky:
The Psychology of Adoption (1990).
|
