Notes

The FOSTER PARENTS' PLAN FOR WAR CHILDREN is operating twenty-five children's colonies in Great Britain today and is caring for more than 4,000 refugee children. Anna Freud is director of three of the Plan's nursery centers. Miss Freud and Mrs. Dorothy Burlingham have written reports of conditions and the care of the children in the Hampstead Nurseries. Limitations of space unfortunately prevent reprinting here the complete report. Especially interesting is the inclusion in the report of the brief clinical history of a boy who developed a rather severe neurosis after being separated from his mother. This was cured in a short time by arranging to bring the mother to him. The authors conclude: 'The interesting point about this story is that it does not seem to be the fact of separation from the mother to which the child reacted in this abnormal manner, but the traumatic way in which this separation took place. Patrick could dissociate himself from his mother when he was given three or four weeks to accomplish this task. When he had to do it all in one day it was a shock to which he answered with the production of symptoms. That means that even children with neurotic possibilities of Patrick's kind could be spared much unnecessary suffering and symptom formation by more careful handling.'