In this volume, a well-known psychoanalyst, dance therapist, and educational consultant chronicles her clinical work with deeply troubled children who fall between the cracks of our diagnostic and educational systems. These children, who frequently turn out to have been sexually or punitively abused, have no real emotional home despite the fact that they live in materially comfortable circumstances. In spite of their apparent brightness and precocity, they do not thrive in the classroom, where their disruptive behavior, tendency to act out, and fragmented learning bring them to the attention of teachers, counselors, and school psychologists. Standard diagnoses do not explain their plight; such children are neither retarded nor learning disabled nor neurotic.

Through poignant case studies, Siegel reviews the developmental circumstances that bring these middle-class waifs to a critical impasse with both their parents and the educational establishment. Time and again she discovers that the children's expectable developmental course has been derailed by their accommodation to parental abuse and deformed parental expectations. Psychodynamic treatment invariably uncovers the maladaptive solutions that fueled the children's behavioral and learning disturbances.

This volume speaks to a broad clinical and non-clinical readership: psychoanalytic clinicians; psychologists; counselors; social workers; art, dance, and music therapists; special education teachers; child therapists; and child care workers. They will all join in admiration of Siegel's treatment approach which focuses on what is healthy in deeply traumatized children and, in so doing, helps debunk the myth of the untreatable child.

About the Author

Elaine V. Siegel, Ph.D., is Supervising and Training Analyst at the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training. A registered dance therapist, she served for 14 years as director of the motor development unit at Suffolk Child Development Center, a research facility of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Siegel maintains a private practice in Long Island and lectures widely both in the United States and Europe. She is the author of Female Sexuality: Choice Without Volition (Analytic Press, 1988).

Reviews

"This book of case histories, written by a gifted and dedicated child therapist, is a most welcome and needed addition to the literature. It is reassuring and refreshing to hear that a humane environment enhances learning in children and that overemphasis on specialized remedial help can make us forget that children are whole human beings with a primary need to be understood."

- Anni Bergman, Ph.D., Professor Clinical Psychology, CUNY

" ... a most welcome and needed addition to the literature."
-Anni Bergman
The City University of New York

"The children's pathology and the author's highly devoted and committed therapeutic approaches, using art, music and dance in addition to verbal interaction, are described in great detail. They make fascinating reading for anyone wishing to deepen his or her understanding of the psyche of children as well as the influence of parental pathology, misguided beliefs and ambitions on the development of their offspring."
-Kurt Glaser, M.D.
American Journal of Psychotherapy

"Elaine Siegel's Middle Class Waifs alerts mental health professionals to the consequences of severe emotional deprivation and abuse in children who live in middle-class, seemingly intact families, and whose initial presentation may be no more alarming than a behavioral problem or a learning disability. The book is highly recommended to those who have long been looking for guidance in this neglected area."
-Anna Ornstein, M.D.
University of Cincinnati

Book Information
ISBN 9780881630985
Author Elaine V. Siegel
Format Hardback
Page Count 280
Imprint Analytic Press,U.S.
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 566g