Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T00:06:17.135Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Consciously Rejected Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

David A. Pemberton*
Affiliation:
Salop County Council Child Guidance Clinic, Shirehall, Shrewsbury
D. Roger Benady
Affiliation:
Salop County Council Child Guidance Clinic, Shirehall, Shrewsbury
*
Now Consultant Psychiatrist, Bellsdyke Hospital, Larbert, Stirlingshire.

Extract

Children who are rejected give a clinical impression of making interpersonal relationships with difficulty. Wolberg (1944) described the consequences of parental rejection as depending upon the age of the child at the time of the rejection, the manner in which frustration was imposed by the parents, the nature and extent of compensatory gratification from others, and the success or failure of spontaneous reparative attempts on the part of the child to establish accepting relationships. Earlier studies of the child's reaction to rejection were marred by the tendency to define rejection too loosely, so that both conscious and unconscious forms were included as well as more frequent ambivalent parental attitudes, with a resultant wide scatter in the form of the children's responses. However, it has been shown by comparison with accepted children that the rejected child is uncommunicative, rebellious, less friendly, and bewildered about life (Symonds, 1938). Rejected children have been noted to be hypersensitive, and it has been speculated that this stems from feelings of insecurity and of not belonging to a permanent setting (Childers, 1935). The types of reaction to rejection were sub-divided into two broad groups—aggressive and submissive (Newell, 1934). Aggressive behaviour, including rebelliousness, disobedience, temper tantrums, quarrelsomeness, stealing and truancy occurred when the parental handling was consistently hostile; while submissive behaviour, including shyness, seclusiveness, cravings for attention, occurred more frequently when the parental behaviour was consistently over-protective (Newell, 1936). The aggressive response to hostile rejection was confirmed by Wolberg, who also thought that the symptoms of delinquency, truancy, enuresis and frustration intolerance should be interpreted in the larger framework of the child's attitudes towards himself and the world.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1973 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

A synopsis of this paper was published in the April 1973 Journal.

References

Childers, A. T. (1935). ‘Hyperactivity in children having behaviour disorders.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 5, 227–43.Google Scholar
Finney, D.J. (1948). ‘Fischer-Yates days of significance in 2 x 2 contingency tables.Biometrika, vol. xxxv, Paris, 1 and 2.Google Scholar
Newell, H. W. (1934). ‘Psychodynamics of maternal rejection.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 4, 387401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, H. W. (1936). ‘A further study of maternal rejection.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 6, 576–89.Google Scholar
Symonds, P. M. (1938). ‘A study of parental acceptance and rejection.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 8, 679–38.Google Scholar
Wolberg, L. R. (1944). ‘The character structure of the rejected child.Nervous Child, 3, 7488.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.