Characteristics of Encopretic Patients and Their Families

Encopresis: A structural/strategic approach to family treatment

“…Other writers (Bellman, 1966;Bemporad et al, 1971;Hoag et al, 1971) have described familial and interpersonal dynamics associated with the symptom of encopresis in ways that are not inconsistent with our observations of this family. Family systems theory postulates that the identified patient's symptoms serve some purpose for everyone in the system, such as to relieve anxiety, to protect a strained marriage, to prevent independence, etc.…”

Parent-child separation: A comparison of maternally and paternally separated children in military families

“…A later study of 17 patients treated for encopretic symptoms at a child psychiatry clinic at a large military medical center revealed that paternal separation was a common variable in many of the clinical subjects. Most of the patients' fathers had been absent from home serving overseas or frequently away on temporary duty leading the authors to conclude that a father's neglect through actual absence or emotional withdrawal is a typical pattern in families with children suffering from encopresis (Bemporad, Pfeifer, Gibbs, Cortner and Bloom, 1971).…”

Chronic childhood constipation: A review of the literature and the introduction of a protocolized behavioral intervention program

“…Erikson [88] pointed at the fundamental meaning of bowel and bladder control as a first step to autonomic functioning. Bemporad et al [89] and Bellman [90] also referred to the typically underlying hostile mother-child psychodynamics that could accompany fecal incontinence. Anthony (1957) spoke of ''the battle of the bowel'', with the child and its mother being locked into a chronic, unyielding struggle for power and control typically seen in the second year of life, during the anal stage of psychosexual development.…”