ENURESIS IN NEGLECTED CHILDREN

The association of enuresis and delinquency is known to every experienced psychiatrist as one of the typical syndromes of child psychiatry. Only rarely is the child referred to the physician because of his enuretic habit. Usually the complaint is truancy, stealing, lying or sex delinquency; and as a rule it is only after careful questioning that a history, or with older children a past history, of bed wetting is obtained.

The social and economic background of the majority of delinquent children is rather poor, and one has the impression that a large number of the children are illegitimate, even when accurate statistics are not at hand. As one searches for possible environmental factors to account for their behavior problems, one usually encounters the fact that they have been neglected or discriminated against or not loved at all. Although one leaves out of the question such physical causes of enuresis as