Features of living through and overcoming complex social situations by adopters in group psychological work

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the causes of complex social situations in the families of adoptive parents and the peculiarities of their processing in group psychological work.

To solve these problems, it is used a semi-structured interview, included observations, methods, and techniques of transactional analysis and monodramas.

It was determined that the emergence of complex social situations in the families of adoptive parents is characteristic of parents who have the following psychological and socio-psychological features: have unresolved own childhood trauma, unresolved marital problems, unconstructive motivation for adoption; lack of assessment of their weaknesses and strengths in the upbringing of an orphan or a child deprived of parental care whom they wish to adopt.

The results of elaboration of difficult social situations with adoptive parents in the group of psychological mutual assistance proved the effectiveness of group psychological work with them.

Psychological work of adoptive parents with parental and childish ego-structure by methods of transactional analysis and monodrama helps them to live their childhood traumas, which has a positive effect on the formation of close relationships with the child and solving difficult social situations in the family.

In the process of group work, several group mechanisms were identified, based on which a group of adoptive parents solves problems of family interaction and overcomes difficult social situations. Such mechanisms include group facilitation, group narrativization of individual stories, group reflection, and generational experience of overcoming injuries.

Through these mechanisms and related group phenomena, social and group myths about adoption as a feat and the negative fatality of the adoption situation, alienation, and tension in families, negative scenarios of family interaction, the trauma of generations and negative parental messages are overcome, as well as acquiring new patterns of behavior in the family and forming harmonious relationships.

Prospects for further research are the correction of the negative life scenario of adopted children through group psychological work with them, starting from primary school age. Because parents cannot always help an adopted child overcome psychological problems on their own, they often face negative projection and undeserved devaluation and mistrust of children.

The practical significance of the study is that its results can be used to introduce a psychological assessment of future adopters. Creating psychological support groups for adoptive parents reduces the risk of family dysfunction and adoption.