Editorial

In this edition of the journal we focus on the theme of trauma. In its many forms, child psychotherapists are increasingly having to work with the effects of trauma. Often this is not so much the impact of a single, major traumatic event so much as the cumulative impact of long-term abuse or neglect. In a recent paper in this journal, for example, Kenrick (2000) drew attention to the damaging effect of the repeated trauma of separation for looked-after children. In addition, we would emphasize, along with Perry et al. (1995), the traumatogenic impact of neglect: ‘Deprivation of critical experiences during development may be the most destructive yet least understood area of child maltreatment.’

In his opening paper Balbernie summarizes for us some of the most recent advances in our understanding of neuroscience, and particularly draws out the implications of this work for our appreciation of the devastating effects that trauma can have and the way these effects actually become wired into the very structure of the brain. This has major implications for us in terms of our thinking about therapeutic practice and Balbernie rightly underlines the value of early intervention.

With this in mind, Mohler et al.'s paper illustrates precisely this approach, as they describe a therapeutic intervention with an 8-week-old girl. Here we can see at first hand how the infant's presence can evoke the trans-generational re-enactment of traumas from the mother's own childhood which, as we know from the work of Main and Hesse (1990), can lead to states of disorganized attachment in the child.

Sadly, of course, such well-informed early interventions are often not available or there may be a variety of reasons why children fail to get help at this stage. Despite our increasing knowledge, it remains all too true that ‘It is an ultimate irony that at the time when the human is most vulnerable to the effects of trauma—during infancy and childhood—adults generally presume the most resilience’ (Pe