Minimal Brain Dysfunctions in the School-Age Child

Abstract

For many years it has been the custom among child guidance workers to attribute the behavioral and learning deviations seen in children almost exclusively to the rearing patterns and interpersonal relationships experienced by such youngsters. We, as well as an increasing number of clinical child workers, feel that when evaluating a disturbed child, we must search as carefully among the myriad possibilities of organic causation as we have in the past among the interpersonal, deprivation, and stress factors; and certainly without sacrificing the important knowledge which has accumulated in the latter areas. In many clinics, it has become habitual to assume psychogenicity when no easily recognizable organic deviation can be found in the child. Undoubtedly this has been due, in part, to the difficulty in delineating the contribution to symptomatology and personality structure of subtle organic and central nervous system deviations, and to the