The Effect of Severe Trauma on a Four-Year-Old Child

Murder shocks the adult mind with the horror of uncontrolled violence and irremediable destruction, but young children still immersed in a private world of magic power and brutal happenings may view such events differently. The strongest impact may come from an aspect of the experience which arouses earlier fears and anxieties. Studies of children subjected to traumatic events have shown how the frightening, overstimulating occurrences are not understood objectively, but are interpreted by the children in relation to their fantasies and previous experiences. It was possible during my training at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic to study the effect of trauma on a little girl who at four years of age had witnessed an act of violence which in a few minutes swept away her parents and home and irrevocably changed the course of her life.

The child's father, later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, had stabbed his wife during a quarrel caused by his delusions of her infidelity. He inflicted four serious chest wounds. Screaming for help, the woman staggered into the garden where Ellen and her sisters, three and two years old, were playing. The mother's hands were badly cut, as if she had seized the knife to defend herself. She died several hours later in a hospital. The only other adult in the house, an aunt related by marriage, who later took over the care of the children, had been unable to reach the garden because the father had