ABSTRACT

A psychotic child’s first and most urgent need is to feel that the explosive violence which threatens to burst everything apart can be held and contained within a setting which can bear it. Any method of treatment needs to take into account that at root such children are terror-stricken. Every particle and cell in their body seems to have been touched with a potent irritant. As one recovering psychotic child said, ‘It was like hobgoblins in the blood.’ After the rage and terror have been worked over and abated, the child may go on with autistic habits, simply because they have become habitual and firmness is needed to help him to give them up.