Abstract
A three-year-old boy showed constipation after his father and family were transferred to Singapore from Tokyo area. At one time, his parents forcibly tried to pick up his feces and this seemed to bare psychologically affacted him. After this episode, the boy began to show more and more constipaticn and fecal incontinence. About one year later, this family came back to Japan and his mother took the patient to our clinic. The acquired megacolon was confirmed by X-ray examinations. In the course of therapy. mild laxative was given ud operant conditioning approach was conducted by which the patient was admired whenever his bowel novement was successfully performed. Since the 27th day, the patient became able to defecate without failure and joyfully told his sense of achievement to his mether. Then the sigmoidcolon by X-ray revealed to be normal. We are still following up this case. It is concluded that the behavioral treatment of operant conditionig has been very useful in this case.
