The Dursleys and Harry: Neglect or abuse?

[Alex Boyd]

No: HPFGUIDX 115265


Female_Jedis wrote:

> If Petunia completely ignored Harry as a baby and as a young child, 
> while showering Dudley with attention and affection, Harry quite 
> simply should be a sociopath at this point and should be completely 
> unable to form healthy relationships without intensive therapy.  


Just a quick note here: while lots of abused children do not have
normal psychological development, the range of responses is quite
varied.  As far as I know, no one is really sure why one person coming
from an abusive background turns out to be, as you say, a sociopath
and another with a similar background turns out more-or-less OK. 
There are lots of theories, but mainly it seems to be a matter of
individual psychological resilience.  Harry's fairly-normal emotional
development is *unusual*--one would probably expect him to have more
problems than he does--but not *completely* unrealistic.  If you took
a hundred RW kids with backgrounds like Harry's (which wouldn't be
tough, provided you left out the almost-killed-by-evil-wizard bit),
you'd expect most of them to show some psychological problems, a few
to be total sociopaths, and a few more to be basically OK despite it
all.  

Alex