What Abandoned Children Construe as Stressful Experiences Implications for Psychoanalytic Relational Theory and Child Psychotherapy

As part of psychological evaluations to determine whether interventions were needed, 106 abandoned children (aged 5 to 19 years) residing in SOS-Kinderdorf International Children’s Villages in Spain were individually administered a structured interview to learn what each child construed as upsetting. Before admission, each child had been exposed to one of three traumatic, interpersonal experiences: excessive neglect; physical abuse; and parents who were prostitutes, abusing drugs, or both. In an unexpecte