Adoption as a Lifelong Process

Barbara Steck, MD Lecturer emeritus in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and PsychotherapyUniversity of Basel, SwitzerlandBarbara Steck, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist for children and adolescents. She trained in psychoanalysis and family therapy and worked in private practice in Lausanne, Switzerland from 1983 to 1993. At the same time, she was a consultant for adoption in the child and adolescent psychiatric clinic of the University of Lausanne.  From 1994 to 2003 she worked as a senior physician in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry of the University of Basel, where she was an academic lecturer and active in teaching and research. She was the principal investigator for Switzerland of an international multisite research project, which was supported by a grant from the European Union in its 5th framework program ‘Quality of Life’: Children of somatically ill parents (COSIP). Since 2004 she works as a psychoanalytic therapist and supervisor in private practice. She is an author of more than 50 publications and book chapters, covering many fields of child and adolescent psychiatry such as issues in adoption, effects of trauma, somatic or psychic illnesses of parents as well as therapeutical aspects (indication for psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, psychodrama group therapy, palliative medicine). She is the author of many books.

• 1. Introduction: History of Adoption.- 2. Self-development and Parenthood.- 3. Stress and Pain.- 4. Adoption Studies.- 5. Adoption Triangle.- 6. Filiation Breakup.- 7. Filiation Creation.- 8. Clinical Vignettes.- 9. Professional Help.- 10. Annex