Children at psychiatric risk / edited by E. James Anthony and Cyrille Koupernik.

Date:
[1974]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Children at psychiatric risk / edited by E. James Anthony and Cyrille Koupernik. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Introduction: The Syndrome of the Psychologically Vulnerable CMld 7 effective. The baby is gratified by the mother's skillful ministrations, and the mother is gratified through his positive response to her. The vulnerable constitution may manifest itself as much in structure as in function. Walker [21] in a study of nursery school children correlating somatotype and the teacher's rating of behavior found that ectomorphic types were generally the problem children about whom the parents complained because they were shy, sensitive, irritable, unfriendly, nervous, fearful, and anxious, all of which would predispose them to the subsequent development of internalizing syndromes of the anxious, depressive, phobic, and obsessional varieties. The importance of physique in relation to adjustment was recognized 35 years ago by Burt [6], who found no correlations between thinness and inhibition, and 20 years later Davidson and his associates in Parnell's laboratory [17] found a significant association in 7-year-olds between ectomorphy and a constellation of behaviors made up of anxiety, restlessness, fussiness, and conscientiousness. The same connection was followed into adolescence by Parnell [17], who discovered that ectomorphic students with poor muscular development and below average in fat were six times more likely to seek psychiatric help than other somatotypes. Along with primary action and reaction patterns, temperament and body build was a significant relationship to vegetative functioning. Wenger [22] described the S child (sympathetic predominant) as emotionally unstable, tense, restless, impulsive, overactive, insecure, and dependent on affection and approval from others, some of which would place him among the vulnerable group of children. Finally, in the context of hormonal development, Tanner [19] found evidence to link late maturation with maladjustment, feelings of inadequacy and rejection, and a sense of not belonging to the group. These late maturers also tended to be predominantly ectomorphic. These various theoretical ideas and investigations into constitution, summarized and discussed by Anthony [1], build up a picture of the vulnerable individual in the making, whose snowballing development through infancy, childhood, and adolescence is punctuated by crisis and catastrophe as vulnerable periods of transition are reached. It is often difficult to decide unequivocally whether the mother has let the
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