The Social Psychology of the Child with Epilepsy

The author considers in detail the lives of 118 epileptic children, bringing together and analysing a wide range of measurements of behaviour, social relations and abnormalities of brain function. He discusses how the children fare in school, and how epilepsy affects both the teacher’s perception of the child and the child’s scholastic performance. The dearth of medical centres which could diagnose and treat epilepsy at the time is examined, and hospital use according to parents’ social class is analysed. The author looks at the role of parents of epileptic children and shows that their attitude to epilepsy is of major importance for the child’s adjustment. The prejudice to which epileptic children and adolescents were subjected by the world at large is chronicled in detail.

Finally the author considers how his empirical material makes a contribution to the theoretical problem of integrating sociology, psychology and biology into a single discipline concerned with the explanation of human social behaviour.