Rethinking the psychological assessment of adoptive families from constructivist perspective

Abstract

The paper explores the prospects of constructivist approach to psychological assessment of adoptive parents in contemporary context characterized by tightening in the selection process of adoptive parenting candidates in Russia. The main ideas of constructivism (understanding knowledge as a construction, contextual meaning of truth, usefulness as criterion of a good knowledge) are evaluated in the light of psychological diagnostics. A review is presented of the most important postulates of the Personal constructs theory by G.Kelly, and of the studies in adoptive care and family psychology conducted following this paradigm. The process of the constructs system formation in the context of adult-child relationships, its impact on parental expectations from child and parental estimations of goodness of interaction are described in details. The approach is illustrated by the proposal of a rank repertory grid method of studying parental expectations by means of evaluation of children’s portraits. The important features of parental construing of a child that can be traced by qualitative and quantitative analysis of a grid include variety of personal constructs content, ability to modulate emotional reaction, existence of rigid stereotypes in expectations from adoption, level of mentalization an the presence of communicative distortions, specific attitudes towards family members, etc. The relevant goals of psychological counseling, family psychotherapy and targeted pre-adoption training programs are listed. Authors emphasize the focus on intersubjectivity and collaborative relationships with family inherent to constructivist approach in contrast with traditional paradigm of psychological assessment aimed at clear-cut discrimination between functional and non-functional parents by an expert.