ABSTRACT
A number of children have lived in families and the wider world in which they have had insufficient protection or care, and so have had to find their own ways of managing to survive in dangerous environments. Deprivation, neglect or abuse means they have experienced continual trauma and loss. Some have lacked ‘good enough’ parenting for most of their lives. They have lived in families where domestic violence, parental substance abuse and mental health problems, such as psychosis, self-harm or periods of depression, are common place, often with cycles of damage and deprivation going back over the generations. Parents are unable to hold in mind their child as a person in their own right but see them in terms of their own phantasies and needs, as a ‘ghost in the nursery’ (Fraiberg 1980). Parents who are emotionally unavailable leave children feeling abandoned, rejected and frightened. Domestic violence, even if not directed at the child, leaves them unable to receive relief of their fear from a frightened parent. Some parents and carers are directly frightening, terrorizing through bullying and physical violence and abuse, including sexual abuse. Sometimes the danger comes from outside the immediate family, as in some sexual abuse as well as bullying or gang violence. Dangers include social services and multiple moves in the care system. The immediate family may be socially powerless to protect their child, whether through poverty or otherwise living on the margins of society, sometimes as part of a social group experiencing extreme racism, oppression, social conflict, persecution or war.
