Expressions of guilt were examined in 87 children, 5-9 years old, in a psychiatric interview and in a semiprojective procedure using vignettes to elicit children's narratives about interpersonal conflict and distress. Psychiatric assessments yielded similar patterns for children of depressed and well mothers, but semiprojective representations differed for the two groups. Children of well mothers showed prototypic expressions of adaptive guilt involving themes of responsibility and reparation, especially at the older ages. In contrast, themes of children of depressed mothers often were aberrant, distorted, and unresolved, indicating possible differences in the etiology and functions of their guilt. Guilt is considered in relation to other dimensions of affect, theories of moral development, patterns of adaptation and maladaptation, and processes of social transmission of emotional problems.This study focuses on children's experiences and interpretations of guilt. Guilt refers to thoughts and feelings of remorse and responsibility that accompany real or imagined wrongdoings. Guilt, like other discrete emotions, has adaptive functions (Izard, 1977). As the main affect in conscience, it checks aggressive impulses and encourages people to undo harms, hence restoring social harmony. Guilt can also be dysfunctional when it is excessive, deficient, defended against, or inappropriate to the circumstances. A developmental psychopathology approach (Rutter & Garmezy, 1983) was used here to explore adaptive and maladaptive forms of guilt by comparing children from populations in which the meaning and functions of this emotion might be expected to differ. Children of depressed and well mothers were studied during the early school years.Clinical depression is an affective disorder in which there are prolonged periods of sadness and inability to experience pleasure. It has both vegetative signs (e.g., disturbances in eating and sleeping patterns) and psychological symptoms. Major psychological symptoms include feelings of guilt, worthtessness, and low self-esteem (Spitzer & Endicott, 1978

The Child Assessment Schedule (CAS) was developed to address the need for a standardized child interview that could be used for research and clinical purposes. The CAS has several distinguishing characteristics: (1) Questions and responses are standardized, (2) the format was designed to enhance rapport with the child, and (3) information necessary for DSM III childhood diagnoses is explicitly solicited. The CAS was administered to 32 child outpatients, 18 inpatients, and 37 normal controls. Derived scores were obtained for total psychopathology, 11 content areas, and 9 symptom complexes. Interrater reliability for the total CAS score was quite high. The CAS was able to discriminate among the three groups in total score indicating degree of psychopathology, on 9 of the 11 content areas, and on 8 of the 9 symptom complexes. Significant correlations were found between the CAS and maternal report of child behavior and between the CAS and child self-report of internal affects. It was concluded that the CAS has adequate reliability and validity, although further research is indicated.

This is an exploratory study of the emotional and social functioning of young children with a manic-depressive parent. Seminaturalistic observations and experimental manipulations of the affective environment were used to assess 2-year-old children's regulation of emotion, as well as their aggression, altruism, and affiliative interactions. Children with a bipolar parent sometimes showed heightened distress and preoccupation with the conflicts and suffering of others, especially disturbances in adults. These children had difficulty in maintaining friendly social interactions, in sharing, and in helping their playmates. They also had difficulty modulating hostile impulses; they showed more maladaptive patterns of aggression toward peers and adults. These interpersonal and emotional problems of offspring of manic-depressives were often similar to those problems of manic-depressives that have been implicated in the clinical literature as possibly associated with the transmission of the disorder. This apparent congruence of findings obtained from different disciplines employing very different research strategies and studying people of different ages, attests to the utility of an explicit interdisciplinary approach in the area of developmental psychopathology.

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