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Giving up a child for adoption presents a serious emotional and psychological challenge for the mother. Using the components of normal grieving, this paper illustrates the ways in which the bereavement process was distorted and delayed in 22 women seen in psychotherapy who had earlier given up a child. Recommendations are offered for facilitating a healthy mourning process in the relinquishing mother.

After a review of the prohibition against seeing acquaintances in therapy and the frequency with which the prohibition is violated the rationale in favor of the injunction are presented. They include 1) loss of the previous relationship, 2) complication of transference and counter transference, and 3) stimulation of therapist grandiosity. Guidelines are then offered to offset the difficulties in seeing acquaintances as patients. They include, 1) realization of the reality of both the "real" relationship and the transference relationship, 2) acquiring supervision or consultation, 3) becoming more conservative in the observance of rules about time, space, and protocol, 4) thinking through and clarifying values about the dual relationships, 5) being prepared to sacrifice the nontherapeutic relationship, and 6) being prepared to end the therapy and transfer the patient. The problem of seeing acquaintances in therapy is discussed in terms of the profession as a whole and the need for research, training and a more articulated code of ethics.

Factor analysis of a questionnaire designed to measure a son's feeling of being understood by his father is reported. The questionnaire, which contained 12 paragraphs each purporting to be an aspect of the son's feeling of being understood by his father, was administered in small groups to a sample of 413 male college students along with three indices of son's level of general functioning--a self-concept scale, a somatic complaints inventory, and the degree of help-seeking behavior. Five interpretable factors were extracted from the data. The meaningfulness of the factors was substantiated by their significant correlations with certain of the other measures administered to the sample. Three of the factors were correlated positively (p less than .01) with Ss' self-concept, while two were correlated negatively (p less than .01) with the number of somatic complaints by the Ss'.

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