Trauma & Art

Power dynamics

In her book Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness (2008) Betty Jean Lifton, influenced by Erik Erikson’s identity theory, which stresses the importance of continuity with one’s past in the service of one’s future, and also using theories of the self and concepts of psychological trauma, explores how adoptees put together a sense of self without that continuity. Lifton, an adoptee herself, has been in touch with hundreds of adopted men and women through her rap groups, research interviews, and part-time counseling practice. Additionally, she writes that for this book she drew upon fifty in-depth interviews conducted with men and women adopted before six months of age, and over two hundred essay-style questionnaires that cover the adoptee’s life cycle. She also sent questionnaires to fifty birth mothers about their experience in relinquishing their children and the quality of their reunions and interviewed twenty-five adoptive mothers about their reactions to their child’s reunion with the birth parents.

‘Those who know their mothers cannot imagine what it is like not to know the woman who brought you into the world. What it is like to be forbidden by law to see her face, hear her voice, know her name. No one can imagine it because it is unimaginable’ (Betty Jean Lifton)

You can read some extracts from her book below

Numi Numi (Lullaby byY. Halperin & Y.Engel)

Numi numi yaldati, numi numi nim (Sleep, sleep my sweet little girl, sleep)

Numi numi k’tanati, numi numi nim (Sleep, sleep my sweet little one, sleep)

Aba halakh la-avodah, halakh halakh aba (Father has gone to work, he is away)

Yashuv im tseit ha-l’vanah (He’ll return when the moon appears)

Yavee lakh matanah (He’ll bring you a gift)

Numi numi yaldati, numi numi nim (Sleep, sleep my sweet little girl, sleep)

Numi numi k’tanati, numi numi nim (Sleep, sleep my sweet little one, sleep