Doubly Deprived*

I intend to present some aspects of my work with a patient whom I have been treating for just over two years, initially on a once weekly basis and twice a week since June 1973. Martin was referred to the Clinic for very considerable learning difficulties, (he was nearly fourteen when he started treatment and his reading age was six), for aggressive behaviour and stealing. He had made a suicidal attempt two years prior to referral when he tried to jump from a second floor window.

Martin is the illegitimate child of West Indian parents. His mother died when he was seven years old, but she had had no contact with Martin after he had been placed in residential care; he was at the time two months old. His father had disappeared at the beginning of the mother's pregnancy. Martin had three placements up to the age of two, when he was fostered by an English couple with a child of their own, a boy four years older than Martin. He was with the foster parents for ten years until fostering broke down. Martin was at the time twelve years old. It seems that the foster parents found Martin increasingly unmanageable because of his stealing and very defiant behaviour. They had reached the point where they felt that they were “unable to accept him or have any trust in him”. There is no indication of the impact that the attempted suicide one year before the breakdown of fostering, might have had on the foster parents and how it might possibly have contributed to their feeling at a loss. They reported that the difficulties with Martin had very considerably increased from the time when he was informed of his natural mother's death. He was then seven years old.

When Martin left the foster home, he returned to a Children's Home and apparently there were no outward signs of his being distressed about the move. There are many indications in the case history of the foster parents’ deep feeling of failure in their relationship with Martin, and they saw his coldness and detachment as conf