[Congenital visual deficiency: chances and difficulties of management].
The traditional theories according to which deprivation of the visual channel is directly responsible for every disturbance observed in children born blind or partially sighted prove to be unsatisfactory; they fail to answer why, given the same visual defect, some children develop in a healthy way while others present a typical picture of infantile psychosis. The authors put forward the following hypotheses: infantile psychosis is always both a sign of and a response to trauma, in the sense developed by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which has struck the mother-child dual unit; the high frequency of psychotics among children born blind indicates that blindness is a particularly charged trauma. The traumatic neurosis of the parents and especially of the mother is catastrophic for the child; it is therefore necessary to understand why and how its works, how it can be avoided or dealth with. The authors present a detailed clinical description of the various possible mother-child constellations and regarding unfavourable outcomes, propose preventive measures.