ABSTRACT
When Lesley was 4 years old her mother died suddenly and in very tragic circumstances. Like so many of the children in the group of patients she had never known her father. During her early years she had often been taken into a children’s home when her young mother felt unable to meet the needs of a small baby, coming herself from a family where members had been in and out of care at various periods. The school and educational psychologist noted her ‘too good’ and excessively self-reliant and controlled behaviour. All who are professionally concerned with children whose early lives have been so disrupted stress the importance of providing continuity and constancy of relationships for them, and deprecate the many changes of staff which disturb their lives in institutional care. The psychiatrist felt that without psychotherapeutic help, Lesley could, in adolescence, become delinquent in a promiscuous way and hoped that long-term help might prevent such an eventuality.
