ABSTRACT
Long-term work with the children revealed many of them to have a pervading preoccupation with the complex of experiences relating to their sense of deprivation, which left little space in their lives for anything else, thus diminishing their capacity to benefit from ordinary maturational experiences. Yet, despite the permeation of the effects of deprivation into every aspect of the child’s development, almost invariably the children had little initial capacity to feel or think about their inner suffering. The staff of children’s homes is especially vulnerable to being treated with contemptuous indifference. Like the therapists they feel themselves to be regarded by the children as the mere rubbish collectors when the children feel themselves to be the unwanted litter which must be kept off the streets. Unless supported to understand the significance of such feelings as a projective form of communication from the children, the staff is liable to react to their own hurt feelings by leaving.
