The Re-Education of a Retarded Blind Child

This paper describes in detail a backward and withdrawn child, born with multiple handicaps and subjected to pain, frustration, and lack of stimulation in her early childhood. Her therapy, carried out by Alice Goldberger within the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, aimed at counteracting past damage and promoting any urge toward normal development which lay dormant in her.

The first report which the parents gave to us on Judy's history was rather scanty.

At the time of the child's birth, they were already in their middle forties, with two teenage daughters, seventeen and eleven years old. They lived as a close-knit family in a modest house of their own, together with the maternal grandmother.

Due to the mother's high blood pressure, Judy was born in the hospital by Caesarian operation. She was "blue" at birth (not due to strangulation). Her feet were deformed, one toe folded under each foot. There was some (undefined) malformation of her mouth. At age six weeks she was found to be suffering from congenital cataract with her sight reduced to some light perception.