"[Looks] at adoption from all sides of the adoptee, birth mother, adoptive parents . . . A provocative, comprehensive inquiry."—- Kirkus Reviews "Honest and moving."—- New York Times "Important and powerful . . . [the author] is concerned not just with adoptees but with the experience of adoptive parents and birth parents."—- Psychology Today "A moving and powerful plea for open discourse instead of secrecy among the participants in the adoption process."—-Public Welfare, American Public Welfare Association The first edition of Betty Jean Lifton's Lost and Found advanced the adoption rights movement in this country in 1979, challenging many states' policies of maintaining closed birth records. For nearly three decades the book has topped recommended reading lists for those who seek to understand the effects of adoption—-including adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, and their friends and families. This expanded and updated edition, with new material on the controversies concerning adoption, artificial insemination, and newer reproductive technologies, continues to add to the discussion on this important topic. A new preface and afterword by the author have been added, as well as a greatly expanded resources section that in addition to relevant organizations now lists useful Web sites. Betty Jean Lifton, Ph.D., is a writer, psychotherapist, and leading advocate for adoption reform. Her many books include Journey of the Adopted Self and The King of Children , a New York Times Notable Book. She regularly makes appearances as a lecturer on adoption and has an adoption counseling practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.

The classic memior of Betty Jean Lifton's search for her secret past that helped open the way for so many others. Betty Jean Lifton, acclaimed author of several books on the psychology of the adtoped that have helped open the field, tells her own story of growing up adtoped in the closed adoption system. Calling Twice Born both an autobiography and a psychological journey into the past, Lifton takes the reader with her as she describes the loneliness and islolation of an adopted child cut off from the knowledge of her heritage. She explores the ambivalence and guilt that she feels toward her adoptive parents when she awakens as an adult to her need to ask: Who am I? With the mounting suspense of a detective novel, Twice Born explores not only the difficulty of searching for one's past when one's records are sealed, but also the complexity of trying to reunite with the birth mother from whom one has been separated by social taboos--and by time. More than a vivid and poinant memior, Lifton has given hs a story of mothering and mother-loss attachment and bonding, secrets and lies, and the human need for origins. Important reading for anyone touched by these issues and by the experience of adoption--which is everyone.