ABSTRACT
Elisa, aged ten years and nine months, was admitted to the clinic for child and adolescent psychiatry because she was suffering from severe encopresis. She had soiled herself several times a day since early childhood with one doubtful interruption of six months, withdrew from social contact, and barely spoke to people outside the family. Since the age of three or four she had received occasional therapy because she displayed general developmental delay. At school and with her peers, on the one hand she was an outsider and was teased (among other names she was called Stink-bomb); on the other hand she often allowed her schoolmates to harass her sexually without being able to set any limits to it. Sometimes she triggered these encounters herself. Staff at the day care group she attended described her as scruffy and neglected. She was finally excluded from the centre and was about to be expelled from school.
