Working Through the Unconscious Assumption of Neglect

ABSTRACT

Most often, neglect is viewed through the lens of immediate consequences such as nutritional or physical deficits. The science of neglect is now revealing that the effects of neglect are both long-lasting and cumulative. This article explores 3 long-term consequences of neglect through a case study of a child who experienced severe neglect the first 24 months of his life and the clinical interventions that are providing remediation for those consequences.

Notes

¹ The Neurorelational Framework takes scientific brain-based principles and translates them into clinically relevant steps that can be applied to any aged infant, child, or adult.

² These socio-emotional milestones originated with Greenspan and Wieder in the 1980s and were later incorporated into Axis V in the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood, Revised (ZERO TO THREE, 1994, 2005), the system used for triaging and diagnosing children from birth to 5 years old. Most recently, the milestone’s language has been adapted and used within the NRF’s clinical framework as its second clinical step in observing what procedural levels of engagement exist in each parent-child dyad.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Harwell

Michelle Harwell, Psy.D., LMFT, is Member and Graduate Psychoanalyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, California.