ABSTRACT
Children who manifest psychopathology are commonly spoken of as having “emotional problems” or as being “emotionally disturbed.” Theoretical work linking psychopathology to emotion processes as well as clinical observation of expressive behavior also suggest that emotion has an important role in childhood psychopathology. For example, anger, resentment, sadness, and fear can be diagnostic markers of different psychiatric disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Nevertheless, little clinical research has explicitly focused on emotional characteristics of children with psychiatric disorders, or on how emotional aspects of development are involved in childhood psychopathology. Perhaps this is because some clinicians believe that the emotions expressed by children who have psychiatric disorders are not central to their difficulties, or that there are no discernible patterns in emotion processes that would provide insight into the children's psychopathology. Others suggest that the role of emotion goes well beyond being an expressive sign of difficulty (e.g., Cicchetti & Schneider-Rosen, 1984; Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994; Gray, 1987). Rather, they see emotion processes as fundamental aspects of certain kinds of psychopathology.
