The tragic case of Madeleine McCann seems to have reemerged recently and it leads me to consider the psychological questions surrounding the event.
Obviously the abduction and loss of a child is psychologically damaging to parents, which is likely to be made worse by the fact they do not have closure on the case; they cannot know whether she is still alive or not.
But what would the effects be on Madeleine if she is still alive? What trauma has she been through and how has this effected her development? I've learned from books such as 'The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog' how damaging early childhood trauma can be and the effects it can have on the developing brain, not allowing it to make the right connections or associations.
And what if she were to be reunited with her parents? Would she recognise them? Would there be some sort of internal instinct which allows her to really know that they are her parents? Or is it too late? Was she taken away too early in her development to ever regain a 'normal' relationship with her parents? Would she still have the original attachments? Would she need to, or be able to, form new attachments to them? Would she have emotional attachments to her abductor(s)?
There are many important questions raised by such a case, the answers to which we may never know.
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