Orphans of words

Abstract

From the earliest age, a child has the right to grow up in his history, the history that governed his conception and which fashioned his foetal development, without any disjunction between this history and that from after his birth. The exploitation of children's amnesia which consists of denying the existence of forgotten memories from the beginning of the subject's life is a negation of a fundamental part of this life, and it is very difficult for a child to structure himself on what is not said. From the beginning of their lives, abandoned children can express signs translatable into a demand for meaning. The meaning of their lives. It is between the lines of their history and their naming that access to the symbolic is opened up for them. In order to change filiation, it still needs to be known what has been renounced in order to mourn it. To help an orphan live his particular destiny to the full, it has to be admitted that he will have to bear the traces of a primordial wound, as much real as symbolic, for his entire life. It is only in taking account of this fact that society can claim to help to these children with adoption. Son of his adoptive parents, this he no doubt is, but he will also remain the son of his biological parents. The double loyalty, if it does not function in the legal register, remains inscribed in the unconscious and can be at the origin of a malaise and certain types of behaviour, both successful and unsuccessful, that are sometimes inexplicable.

Keywords: subjectivity; clinic psychotherapie; adoption.