Florence Clothier
was a psychoanalyst at the New England Home for Little Wanderers.
Her exchange with U.S. Children’s
Bureau official Mary Colby suggests that Freudian developmental
theory was one factor in the reconsideration of early (sometimes
called “direct”) adoptions: the placements of newborns
and young infants. Another was the spread of adoption
science in many different research fields and the general turn
toward nurture in the human sciences after 1940. At the beginning
of the century, child-placers considered early adoptions extremely
risky and advised against them, in spite of the fact that many adopters
expressed strong preferences for babies. By midcentury, adoptions
of children under one year of age had increased significantly. The
resistance that Clothier noted to this trend, and her concession
that early placement might not make sense when social workers had
only “meagre” information to go on, indicate the stamina
of eugenic worries about the
children available for adoption.
Dear Miss Colby:
Thank you so much for your letter with its helpful criticisms of
my adoption manuscript. I am hopeful that “MENTAL HYGIENE”
will use the whole set. . . .
You questioned my insistence that, if possible, adoption placements
should be made in early infancy. On psychological grounds I feel
very strongly on this point. However, I do realize that there are
many cases where the information is so meagre that, even at the
risk of introducing traumatic experiences, adoption has to be delayed.
I shall go over my manuscript and try to make it clear that, where
information is meagre, delay in legal adoption is advisable. That
need not always or necessarily mean that careful early placement
on a trial basis is contra-indicated. From a psychological point
of view I am convinced of the importance for the child (and the
adoptive mother) that the conflicts and struggles of the infantile
and Oedipal development be lived through with the permanent love
objects. This psychological fact should, of course never be admitted
as an excuse for careless or inadequate work and investigation.
On the contrary, it challenges the skill and energy of the social
worker and makes tremendous demands on the efficiency of the social
agency. I realize that many agencies throughout the country are
not equipped and staffed to accept the challenge of painstakingly
careful early placements. However, that does not alter the fact
that the child’s infantile relationships and experiences are
important and that insofar as environment can modify the structure
of the personality infantile relationships and experiences are doing
so. As often happens, we have here a conflict between what, in the
light of our present day knowledge, seems psychologically true and
what seems sociologically advisable, safe or expedient. Similes
are unsatisfactory, but this occurs to me. A surgeon, addressing
a professional group, does not hesitate to recommend what seems
to him the best operative procedure, even though many clinics may
not be staffed or equipped to carry out that procedure. He outlines
his procedure and trusts that medical centers and societies will
see to it that it is not exploited or misused by inexperienced,
careless or ignorant persons.
I realize that problems in the field of psychology and sociology
are complex and not easy to control. For this reason, I suspect,
social workers as a defense develop patterns of rigidity about which
they are uncritical. There is need for social workers, as a professional
group, to evaluate accepted social work procedure in the light of
new experimental work coming from all sorts of sources, including
genetics, the various schools of psychology, medicine, sociology
and economics.
As a psychiatrist, interested in social problems, I can conscientiously
express only what, in the present state of my knowledge, I believe
to be true. I grant that what I may think of as a fact may be regarded
by others as a theory. Certainly further difficult study and observation
of the effects of infantile relationships and experiences is essential
and I hope that social workers will follow these studies alertly
and critically. . . .
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