The following criteria constitute emotional abuse and neglect and should be present for emotional abuse and neglect to be diagnosed: the nature of the interaction between a parent and a child is a significant ongoing debilitating factor in the child's psychological/emotional development; omission as well as commission can constitute emotional abuse; and no physical contact is required for emotional abuse and neglect to occur. Because so many parental behaviors and parent-child interactions can be emotionally abusive and neglectful for the child, it is impractical to include them in a definition or construct an exhaustive list. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), however, cites six forms of psychological maltreatment: spurning, terrorizing, exploiting/corrupting, denying emotional responsiveness, isolation, and mental and cognitive neglect. Professionals in child protection and development continue to face challenges in recognizing and operationally defining child emotional abuse and neglect, as well as presenting evidence of it in a legal forum. The difficulty lies in attributing various manifestations of problematic behavior and emotional states in children directly to the parental relationship. In order to facilitate the documentation of emotional abuse and neglect, the author proposes an alternative framework that categorizes the various forms of emotional abuse and neglect according to a failure to meet a child's needs as a psychosocial being. Under this framework, categories of emotional abuse and neglect are parental emotional unavailability, unresponsiveness, and neglect; negative attributions and misattributions to the child; developmentally inappropriate or inconsistent interactions with the child; failure to acknowledge the child's individuality and psychological boundary; and failure to promote the child's social adaptation. The author compares these categories with those of the APSAC. 4 tables and 38 references