The MacArthur Story Stem Battery was used to examine maternal and self-representations inneglected, physically abused, sexually abused, and nonmaltreated comparison preschool children.The narratives of maltreated children contained more negative maternal representations and morenegative self-representations than did the narratives of nonmaltreated children. Maltreatedchildren also were more controlling with and less responsive to the examiner. In examining thedifferential impact of maltreatment subtype differences on maternal and self-representations,physically abused children evidenced the most negative maternal representations; they also hadmore negative self-representations than nonmaltreated children. Sexually abused childrenmanifested more positive self-representations than neglected children. Despite these differencesin the nature of maternal and self-representations, physically and sexually abused children bothwere more controlling and less responsive to the examiner. The investigation adds to the corpusof knowledge regarding disturbances in the self-system functioning of maltreated children andprovides support for relations between representational models of self and other and theself-organizing function that these models exert on children's lives.