Meritxell Pacheco

Meritxell Pacheco Pérez is Doctor in Psychology and a Psychotherapist. She is a Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, Education Sciences, and Sport FPCEE Blanquerna, at Ramon Llull University (Spain). Since the beginning of her career, she has trained, from a constructivist narrative positioning, to professionals working with children and families, and specifically in the intervention targeted to foster families. She is a Co-coordinator of the Masters in Adoption and Foster Care: Multidisciplinary Intervention (Faculty of Psychology, Blanquerna, Ramon Llull University, Pontificia Comillas University). She is a reviewer for several scientific publications. She has investigated and published mainly on the construction of identity and the development of the psychotherapeutic process.

In this symposium, we assume that the condition of being adopted is for all life. Although research on adoption tends to focus on childhood, being adopted is for all life and, therefore, the fact of being adopted presents different challenges at each stage. Knowledge about this allows us to intervene since childhood. In this regard, each communication will focus on different evolutionary moments of the adoptee; highlighting aspects that have shown to be relevant through research.  Practical implications for the training of future adoptive families and psychotherapeutic process with adoptive families will be elaborated. It is a methodologically plural symposium that includes presentations based on qualitative and quantitative approaches, and from different research paradigms. In the first presentation, Dr. Rangel discusses coherence and thematic diversity of the narratives of adopted children and adolescents, concludes by exploring the benefits of attending to the processes of narrative construction in therapy with adopted children. Secondly, Dr. Solórzano focuses on the analysis of resilience and emphasizes the intervention on this capacity in order to facilitate the process of personal and family adaptation. In a similar vein, the oral communication 3 explores both, processes of narrative construction and the characteristics of personal and family adaptation for adopted. And, it concludes what the key relational elements are in childhood and adulthood. Finally, oral communication 4 analyses the experience of children and the adoption of a group of women who are mothers and adopted by that look in perspective just drifting relevant conclusions for intervention from childhood.