Book excerpt: The maltreatment of children is an issue that has always been with us and civilized societies provide a range of services both social and medical to care for the children and families afflicted. In recent years, greater attention has been drawn to the medical aspects by competent authorities in the fields of forensic medicine, forensic psychiatry, epidemiological psychiatry, child psychiatry and family psychiatry; as well as the social aspects by those child welfare and child care agencies who have the difficult and distasteful task of removing children, with the help of the courts, from parents who can abuse them and are not able to care for them adequately. A multitude of social agencies, whose range of ac tivities involve both the care and, where possible, the social betterment of afflicted families are now involved. Not least in importance is an increase in our global knowledge to help in the prevention or better treatment of these problems. This means more informa tion on familial and genetic factors in human central nervous system develop ment in its broadest sense. This would include how the central nervous system originates, mediates and controls the build up, speed of development and im pulsive release, mastery and direction of aggressive drives and impulses. Very little is so far known about these factors.