ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses those young children who find it impossible to express their opposition to something through a mental process as negation and, therefore, signify it through physical means and by somatic disorders. While hyperactive children in the first category are often classified from a nosographic point of view as presenting behaviour disorders, those in the second group, well-behaved and over-conforming, are usually not considered to be pathological. Yet all these children may be prone to inadequate mental functioning, with the risk of somatization that this entails. When children are able to use negation, they have access to repression as a mode of defence. In children who have breath-holding spells, the perception that triggers the feeling of frustration cannot be made to disappear from consciousness by means of repressing it into the unconscious. Cases of anorexia without additional complications can improve and be cured once children manage to eat by themselves.
