died giving birth to him, nonetheless searched for and found her alive. She did not measure up to his idealized fantasy image. When he met her, she introduced him to a half-sister he never knew existed, whom she had kept, while giving him up for adoption. Shortly after this ill-fated reunion, the killing spree began, in the same section of New York City, the borough of Queens, where he had met his birth mother and sister. I speculated then (1975) that he was repetitively killing young women in mating situations to prevent other unwanted little David Berkowitzes from being conceived in parked cars and later abandoned, as he fantasized that he had been.

  There is little doubt that adoption at its roots was meant to exist on a base of death and rebirth, writes adoption-activist Shea Grimm (2002). The adoptee was, and is, meant to be reborn (into the adoptive family) as if they are dead to their birth family, and the biologic family is dead to them. This concept is echoed in state adoption laws and court rulings, perpetuating the deep-seated notion that death and rebirth is intrinsic to adoption, and so a system of sealed records, falsified birth certificates, secrets and lies evolved to facilitate this process. Consequently in adoption, there is too often no acknowledged grief, no meaningful mourning, and no closure. Just a festering wound that cries out to be healed, so that the adoptee can truly bond, give and receive love, have a solid sense of self and identity, and not get stuck in pathological grief and unrealistic fantasies (of birth parents) that may last a lifetime.

  There should/can be a rebirth/transformative experience in adoptees, but this is possible only in a climate of openness, honesty and validation that allows for grieving first. Where there is a failure to mourn, there will be a failure to bond.

  Recent trends toward more honesty and openness in adoption, and increasing acceptance of the need of some adoptees to search (for their birth parents), has resulted in new beginnings and transformative experiences, in many adoptive families. Yet original birth records remain sealed in all but five of the fifty US states. Most adoptees continue to be frustrated and blocked in their search for information, closure and/or hope for a reunion with birth parents.

  Since the early 1960s, I have seen hundreds of adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth mothers in psychoanalytic therapy. Since 1986 I have testified as a forensic psychologist in mom than twenty cases of adoptees who have killed (usually parricides, but also serial killers and killers of strangers) around the United States. I have repeatedly emphasized (Kirschner, 1980, 1988, 1990, 2006) that the vast majority of adopted children grow up to be psychologically healthy, productive, law-abiding citizens. I have also said (Kirschner, 1992, 1993, 1995, 2006) that there is a spectrum of adoption related issues/problems ranging from the essentially "normal" ones that most adoptees present and resolve to ego "splitting" or dissociative disorders (Kirschner and Nagel, 1996) for which only a small subgroup of adoptees at