ABSTRACT
Soiling is usually a symptom of psychological difficulties, anxieties, and conflicts in the child and in the relationship with his parental figures. It is often present in cases of sexual abuse. Some soiling children may have achieved mastery over their bowels, but regress to a developmental stage previously acquired. Other children may not have managed proper bowel control. The soiling symptom can present either a mixture or a prevalence of oedipal or pre-oedipal issues, as Forth and Barrows argue in their writing about the soiling children they saw in individual psychotherapy. Barrows focused more on oedipal issues in the soiling children he treated. They seemed to have lacked the experience of a robust parental couple, while living in the illusional phantasy of being like a parent, for example in being able to have babies and also of having omnipotent control over one parent to the exclusion of the other one.
