A fifty-year follow-up of an abandoned child: a personal commentary

A five-year-old girl came under the care of a Social Agency because of behavior problems and a severely dysfunctional family. After numerous failed placements, she was treated by the author in a State in-patient ward for a year. As an adolescent and young adult she spent eleven years in a State Institution for the Retarded. After discharge, she made contact with the author at intervals up to the age of sixty. Issues of diagnosis are discussed, as well as the dynamic basis for the long contact.