Eradicating harm or promoting good? Risks and challenges on the interpretation of the principle of justice for the psychological wellbeing of children

Abstract In this article I explore risks and challenges concerning two interpretations on the scope of the principle of justice applied to children’s psychological wellbeing: a restrictive one focused on avoiding harms, and an extended one that understands the promotion of wellbeing as a matter of justice and not as supererogatory. First, I highlight how a restrictive perspective focused on the extinction of the pathology, or the symptom may generate misleading epidemiological interpretations, revictimizations and blind spots in the face of heteromorphic transmission of trauma, neglect and complex trauma. Second, I address how an expanded version of justice focused on promoting wellbeing, common in positive psychology approaches and in theories on specific goods of childhood, may become perverse if the motivation behind the child’s behaviour and emotion is not analysed, since some goods may hide a problem in another area of the child’s life. After exploring the two perspectives on justice, I advocate the need to consider microtraumatic experiences and subtle trauma as instances of harm, the need to implement a psychologically informed child-centred approach, and the implementation of measures oriented to develop the child’s psychological education and epistemic trust as fruitful paths to reduce revictimizations and emotional injustice improving so children’s psychological wellbeing.