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It is noteworthy that adoptees who display signs of the syndrome typically have been raised in a middle class environment, where antisocial behavior is not widely modeled by adults or sanctioned by most of their peers.
PERSONALITY AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS:
The personality profile of the child with the adopted child syndrome resembles that of a person with conduct disorder: More specifically, the impulsiveness and low frustration tolerance typically associated with conduct disorders are present in the adopted child syndrome. The child may display a superficial charm, shamelessly prevaricate to and manipulate others, and show little guilt or remorse for hateful acts or transgressions committed. The child may lack deeply felt, meaningful relationships. Interactions with parents and authority figures are marked by frequent provocative and disruptive limit-testing behavior. Finally, the child seems to expect or invite rejection by his or her parents and other authority figures.
IDEATIONAL CONTENT:
As the adoptee shares his or her private adoption-related thoughts, fantasies, and dreams, the vulnerable side of his or her personality emerges. This accessible vulnerability distinguishes the adopted child syndrome from DSM-IV-type conduct disorder and is crucial to the differential diagnosis and treatment planning. Typically, the child reveals an elaborate preoccupation with his or her origins and the circumstances of the adoption as well as a hypersensitivity to rejection of any kind.
In projective test responses, play therapy, or interviews, the child will reveal privately held questions, fantasies, and beliefs about his or her origins. This ideation often is distorted, unrealistic, and obsessive - especially with regard to having two sets of parents. The child often demonstrates elaborate images of the unknown birth parents, who are believed to be either
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evil, immoral, and rejecting or idealized, loving, generous, and powerful. The child often believes that the birth mother was promiscuous, even a prostitute. These fantasies may be understood as attempts to cope with the injury of the imagined rejection. Because he or she partially identifies with his or her birth parents as they are idealized, such fantasies invariably distort the child's self-image.
The child also struggles with feelings of anger toward the adoptive parents that are aroused by these fantasies. Their role in the adoption may be construed as theft in the child's mind, as well as an aggression against both the birth parents and the child. The adoptive parents' failure to recognize the child's urgent curiosity about his or her original parents may be taken as a rejection of the birth parents and, by extension, a rejection of the genetic heritage of the child. The child tends to construe their failure to discuss adoption candidly as a form of lying. Paradoxically, children may feel the need to protect their adoptive parents from their interest in their birth parents but also resent feeling obligated to them for "the rescue" (Lifton, 1988).
THE CHILD'S QUEST FOR IDENTITY
Information about one's beginnings and ancestors is an essential building block in identity formation during childhood and adolescence. An adopted child usually learns little about his or her origins, perhaps a few details (often fictional) about his or her birth parents and an idealized version of the adoption (the "chosen-child" story). As the child matures, he or she reworks and reinterprets this story, which is poorly understood during early childhood (Brodzinsky, Schecter, & Henig, 1992). In addition to whatever is imparted by his or her adoptive parents, the child also gleans cultural clues. For instance, children become aware that, in many adoptions, the birth parents are not married.
Starting with this sketchy and ambiguous informa-
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