Freud_Burlingham_1943_War_and_Children_k_text

heard about them. "Billeting-failures" on theother hand, wander backwards and forwardsbetween London and the country. Some ofthem may settle down inthe end in residentialnurseries like ours, which are created eitherby private initiative in England or by one ofthe American Relief Funds. More than twentypercent of our cases are billeting failures ofvarioustypes.We should be more inclined to hold the billetsresponsible for the inability of such largenumbers of children to adapt themselves to thenew conditions if we did not possess first-handevidence of the difficulties involved from ourown observations of the children after theirfirst separation from their families. The mostimpressive examples of this kind have beendescribed at various times in our monthlyreports. It is true that not many children presentas frightening a picture as Patrick, threeand a half years old, who found himself reducedto a state in which compulsive formulaand symptomatic actions played the largestpart; or Beryl, four years old, who sat forseveral days on the exact spot where hermother had left her, would not speak, eator play, and had to be moved around like anautomaton. Even apart from these unusualcases we have seen long drawn-out states ofhomesickness, upset and despair which are43