The trend in adoption since the 1960s has been away from secrecy and towards greater openness; contact through an intermediary, and direct contact by letter, is now widely accepted. More controversial is the challenge of face-to-face contact with birth parents, and social workers involved in the decision-making process find themselves having to…

This paper addresses, from a Kleinian perspective, some of the dilemmas and technical issues faced by the child psychotherapist in work with looked-after and adopted children. A selective review of psychoanalytic literature focusing on the use of transference and countertransference is given. Clinical material provides some examples of different…