Aetiological Factors in Childhood Neurosis

Abstract

There has been a tendency to dispose of all the problems peculiar to children under ‘Primary childhood behaviour disorders'. This term would, as pointed out by Cameron (1955), have as broad a meaning as the legal term ‘insane’ or the social term ‘delinquent’. Unless there is delimitation of the terminology used, any aetiological investigation is bound to produce confused results. Furthermore, most aetiological studies suffer from lack of a normal control group and many published works apparently dealing with childhood conditions include adolescents in their case material.