Scientific Journal of KubSAU

The article deals with the unconscious patterns of an adoptive mother’s behavior in foster families. It considers unconscious purposes of a mother, causing certain coping strategies and leading defense mechanisms of adoptive mothers influencing the success of family socialization of foster children. It describes the conflict of the image I mother of the adopted child and the controversy caused by the incompatibility of the requirements of the society to foster mother to be an Ideal Mother, her own model of a Good mother and the opinion of the society about the adoptive mother as inherently Bad. The requirements of the society to the mother, including those to the foster one, the image of the mother of Slavic culture, the unconscious creation by the woman of the image of a good mother and a bad one by the Mother archetype that lead to unconscious desire to preserve the integrity of the personality through switching on psychological defense mechanisms are analyzed. Different styles of interaction and the psychological types of mothers that serve as the basis for the formation of neuroses. The empirical study of a woman’s self-assessment as a mothers is described through the modified technique of S. Budassi; the way of behavior in stressful situations - through projective techniques "Man in the Rain"; psychological defense mechanism – by the procedure of R. Plutchik "Diagnosis of typologies of psychological defense." It describes the results of techniques of a group of women with problematic selfassessment of themselves as the mother in a situation of emotional stability and their response characteristics in stressful situations. The author analyzes the major psychological defense mechanisms of adoptive mothers, their possible reactions in the process of upbringing adopted children. A typology of behavioral reactions of mothers caused by their existing psychological characteristics is proposed