Nancy Verrier

I can't even be a good adoptee.

This is like the adoptee's bible. It's one of the most recommended books in the groups I belong to. Some of it rang true. But it rang true like horoscopes ring true.

Then Ms Verrier wrote that under hypnosis that people remember attempted abortions upon them.

She wrote this at the very end of the book... And all that came before fell like a demolished building.

Some of its information is vital, but I don’t read books about adoption trauma written by non-adoptees anymore, especially ones claiming to be 'experts' about being an adoptee. She has a view as an adoptive woman that she can share. She goes on to shame people that need to use day care, and touts her belief in that as therapist to give that bias/classism some sort of psychological validity. As a therapist myself, I'm calling bullsh!t on that.

This book is a valuable read for adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth mothers. The author provides a comprehensive survey of many issues that MAY be present in the lives of adopted children and their parents - both biological and adopted.

The author presents her thesis in a clear and cogent fashion and incorporates a good deal of research with references and further reading list. Since I am an adoptee myself, I read this book with a critical eye - checking all of the experiences, research, show more and findings against my own feelings, perceptions, and family experiences, including meeting my birth parents when I was in my early thirties. While the content of the book presents experiences that are quite different from my own, many of the adoptee reported feelings and perceptions resonated deeply within me. While I was tremendously blessed to have loving parents (I see my adoptive parents as my real parents) and a wonderful home life, this book gave me a great deal to ponder and was a helpful resource for examining, and better understanding, how feelings of abandonment may have influenced some regretful decisions of my younger adult years.

The author has done a great job of presenting the previously unacknowledged experience of adoption from the adoptees perspective and provides very well developed and important thesis for consideration by all adoptees and birth parents. My rating for this book would have been a 5 except for the failure to articulate the experiences of well adjusted adoptees with minimal testing or acquiescent behaviors. show less

Nancy Newton Verrier's book "The Primal Wound" is certainly a controversial book amongst adoptive parents and has long been on my to read list. I actually agree with much of what Verrier has to say here -- though she has a very traditional view of gender roles and a few things that I don't completely agree with, especially in the conclusions she draws.

Her central point, though, that children and their biological mother share a special and unique connection that begins in the womb that that show more children who are removed from their mother's care suffer a lifelong wound that -- left unhealed -- is formative in their choices and behaviors is very sound. She says that wound exists even if children don't have a conscious memory of being removed from their mothers and are placed in good adoptive homes, suffer from this wound.

Overall, I found the book to be interesting and a helpful way to take a look at the choices and behaviors of adopted children. show less