ABSTRACT
The important task for therapists of engaging with families, and specifically with parents, may be particularly difficult where children are referred with concerns about emotional harm. Significant emotional harm to a child, caused within his or her primary relationship, is assessed as abuse if it is persistent, pervasive, and avoidable, is attributable to the behaviour of the parent, and has caused impairment to the child’s functioning or development. D. Glaser categorized emotional abuse and neglect of children in five broad conceptual areas: emotional unavailability; negative attributions; inappropriate developmental expectations; failure to recognize the child’s separateness, individuality, and uniqueness; mis-socialization. Emotional abuse or neglect of a child by a parent may also be understood in psychoanalytic terms as parents working out, through the relationship with the child, their own early unresolved issues. Specifically, emotional abuse and neglect are established and integral components of the child’s relationship with his or her parent.
