This book is the result of stubbornness and 20 years of clinical experience with young patients. It is also the pressing by-product of 18 years of systematic research in the field of child neuropsychiatry.

When, in 1972, at the age of 22, I was first drawn to paediatrics and child psychiatry, two fields particularly attracted my attention: perinatal medicine and children with chronic disabling conditions. In perinatal medicine, my craving for drama and action was stilled. My longing for practical things was reciprocated by the infants who could not speak but who demanded to be handled with the utmost precision. In work with mentally and physically handicapped children and adolescents, my more reflective and analytical streaks prevailed. The interest in these divergent areas demanded a link, and I soon became obsessed with finding out the origins (first perinatal, later genetic) of chronic disability, and the pathways from infancy to childhood and later to adolescence and adulthood.

I owe a considerable debt to Bengt Hagberg, whom I met for the first time in 1972 and who introduced me to the ‘neuroaspects’ of children. It was also he who put me on to the tracks of research in 1975, and who taught me child neurology from 1977 and onwards. Bengt's need to associate all the diverse neurological and physical symptoms under various syndromal ‘hats’ served as an example for me in child psychiatry, whence I had erred already in 1974 and where I settled in 1978.