HE present study arose because it was our impression that a rather T I arge percentage of the children seen at the Hacker Clinic were adopted children, and that they as a group were extremely disturbed. Beyond the seriousness of their condition, they and their parents presented unusually difficult treatment problems. It was our intent to examine these cases as a group in order to determine what specific role, if any, the fact of the a d o p tion played in the etiology of the problems presented and in the treatment difficulties.Our original material was based on 8 cases of adopted children under 12 years of age, these representing about 10 per cent of the case load of children in this age group. The over-all study dealt with the psychodynamics of both parent and child, but for this presentation we will deal mainly with the child-the meaning of the adoption to him, and how it seemed to enter into his treatment. For purposes of study, we discarded one case, considering it too atypical, for here the child was the older of two boys who had been adopted by an unmarried man! Of the remaining cases 3 of the children were highly schizoid, with severe withdrawal trends and bizarreness in behavior; one showed a beginning narcissistic character development with marked acting-out tendencies; and the others were anxious, impulse-ridden children, showing considerable oral aggression.All but the two youngest children had been in treatment previously, this being described as unsuccessful by the parents. Reports from the previous therapists indicated that the attitudes especially of the mothers had mitigated against a more favorable outcome. Warned in advance about this we made special efforts to help these parents to understand and accept the role they needed to play in the treatment process. In spite of this, we too hit snags which led us to feel that there were some factors at work which were a t least intensified by the fact of the adoption. Two of the children had to be placed in residential settings, because in one instance the parents' own adjustment was so precarious, and in the other, the mother took to her bed, forcing the husband to choose between her and the child. One child had to be seen without the mother's being carried concomitantly in treatment; she confined her contacts with us to frequent telephoning, complaining that her daughter was not progressing fast enough. Even in the four cases
In his presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1950, Guilford pointed out how limited the investigation of creativity has been (12) The study of the artistic person and the artistic product has been similarly meager Of existing studies of artistic ability, the experimental and factor-analytic approaches, which have focused on the component abilities hypothesized as necessary for creativity, have been the most fruitful, revealing certain factors which seemed to distinguish creative performance in general and artistic performance m particular (38, 47, 48) However, whenever clinical techniques of investigation have been employed, findings have been generally equivocal Studies by Roe (31, 32, 33), Prados (29), and others involving the use of projective tests have offered few clues to the personality characteristics of artists, or to conditions fostering creative work Particularly surprising is the fact that these studies have not borne out even those commonly-held hypotheses concerning the manner in which creative expression is revealed in psychological tests This has lead to the feeling that some of the theoretical formulations about creativity require re-evaluation, and has given nse to some speculation about the adequacy of those indices of creativity m psychological tests which had previously been wellrationalized (18) Even more unfortunate is the fact that these studies have unwittingly served to reinforce some of the previous stereotjrpes about artists that they are persons apart from other persons, that their very separateness and uniqueness are in some way essential ingredients for their productivity and for the contributions that they make, * The present paper is an abstract of a dissertation submitted m partial fulfilment of the requirements for tbe degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Uni-
Drawing upon pilot interviews and home observations representing 50 families from rural and urban communes, single middle-class mothers, and "unmarried marrieds," the child-rearing practices, values, and beliefs of counter-culture groups are examined and compared with those of two-parent nuclear families of the 1970s. Attitudes and practices of "new" families bring into focus a number of fundamental issues, such as effects of multiple caretaking, anti sexist attitudes, heightened interest in social relationships, and generalized trust of adults on the psychological growth of the child. Since 1965 there is considerable jour nalistic and informal evidence that many variants of the two-parent nuclear family have been appearing on the American middle-class scene. 7• 12• 1�-2G. w. 4�• nn Many of these alternative family styles grew out of the "counter-cultures," which were vocally and visibly alienated from society. As many of the social sci-entists who studied the original middle class, turned-off adolescents and young adults in the middle and late 1960s had noted, members of these groups had come from cultured, sophisticated, eco nomically advantaged homes, and had been carefully reared by mothers (often well-educated and trained) who had assumed traditional roles and who had
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