Citation

MacCarthy D. Child Abuse Negl. 1979; 3(2): 423-428.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1979, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

The reason for presenting the subject of emotional privation or maternal rejection in the context of a symposium on child abuse is that it affords another example, with a different presentation, of a child evoking hostility in a parent. The maladjustment is however more continuous and less impulsive so that the child escapes the severer forms of abuse resulting in injuries that require treatment, but suffers instead from a gradual impairment of health, growth and personality development. A syndrome of dwarfism with other physical signs and characteristic behaviour is produced, which when discovered in early childhood is a certain sign of long standing severe emotional privation. The consequences of this to mental health in childhood and after are serious. Although well known to some the picture in all its physical and behavioural manifestations is perhaps not sufficiently widely recognised, especially as fringe forms exist for which, if taken in time, intervention might be more effective.