Child Abuse and Neglect: Influences of Qualitative Research and Clinical Practice on Child-Care Legislation and Policy

Abstract

In an early paper, the authors presented the findings of a qualitative research study which applied the self-psychological and object relations theories to the social and interpersonal dynamics surrounding adolescent sexual offending. One of the findings of the study was that informal and formal social responses to detected offenders encouraged the rapid foreclosure of deviant, bad and dangerous social, interpersonal and sexual identity and therefore militated against therapeutic personality reconstruction. The current paper widens the scope of such observations to include the victim, as well as the offender, and examines the role of the therapist in mediating between intrapsychic and interpersonal priorities carried within the offense dynamics and socially and legally defined exigencies surrounding child abuse. The authors suggest that appropriate devolution of therapeutic agency can be devolved to patients through the concept of the twinship transference while at the same time attending to necessary psychiatric, medical, social and legal processes.