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This book is based on experiences gathered in a residential treatment
home for severely disturbed children. The title is excellently chosen. The children described are not necessarily openly destructive or delinquent. They may be withdrawn, passive, indolent or helpless, and they may conform superficially—but hostility and severe anxiety are the common denominators of their behavior, and it is their hatred which arouses hatred and a punitive attitude in their elders and teachers. This, in turn, generates hatred of greater intensity in the disturbed child. Psychoanalytic skill, a highly qualified and devoted staff, fair external facilities were marshalled to break this vicious cycle. Besides the two authors there was a consultant child analyst, Dr. Editha Sterba. The project on which the study is based was in operation for nineteen months. Five children stayed for about this period, five others for about two months. This small number is compensated by the authors' extensive experience with such children. The youngsters were eight to eleven years old, of normal health and intelligence, and had a rather homogeneous socioeconomic background.
The advantages of a residential setting, of being always on the scene, of having an actual role in the children's lives, and of being able to time 'marginal interviews strategically', are convincingly presented. Such a plan offers advantages for research absent in a family setting. The authors describe a number of typical, excellently selected incidents where outpourings of hatred make it impossible for the child to orient itself even in a situation containing ample potential gratification.
Situations are presented in which the destructive response of one youngster evokes retaliation from the best-intentioned adult, or upsets and demoralizes a whole group. But these incidents do not represent 'specific defenses' nor 'specific points of breakdown of control'. All of them show the inability of the severely traumatized ch