A Psycho-Analytical Approach to Juvenile Delinquency

Theory, Case Studies, Treatment

Kate Friedlander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136250910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This is Volume IX of the twelve in the Sociology of Youth and Adolescence series and explores the theory, case studies and treatment of juvenile delinquency using a psycho-analytical method. During recent decades the problem of delinquency has been approached scientifically from various angles. It has been considered as a social problem, as a penological and criminological problem and-from the point of view of the individual offender as a psychological problem. This book is an attempt to show which problems in the vast field of research in delinquency can be solved by psychoanalysis; and in what way sociological and criminological research workers can make use of psycho-analytical findings in order to further their own investigations.

PART I

THE DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS SOCIAL ADAPTATION¹

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

It is exceptional for a criminal career to start late in life. Criminal statistics give the peak age for the first appearance in Court as between the ages of 15 and 17 years. Careful studies of the life-histories of delinquents at the time of their first Court appearance, however, prove that in a majority of cases delinquent acts or at least antisocial behaviour have been apparent before that time. Healy (13^a) in his analysis of 187 cases found that the first offences began from one to five or even more years before action was taken. In my own experience, in the majority of delinquents of antisocial character, the first signs of antisocial behaviour appear between the ages of 7 and 9 years.

Here we come across an important problem. At this early age, many children commit minor offences who do not become delinquents later on. It is known that stealing is far more common in children of that age than court statistics indicate. It is not that children at this age do not know what they should and what they should not do. If they are of average intelligence they are aware that they are committing an offence for which they will be punished. They often do not like being naughty, but the temptation of the moment may prove too strong for them. Their conscience has not yet the firmness necessary to control their impulses under all circumstances. The equilibrium which governs the life of the adult has apparently not been reached at the age of 8, at which in this country criminal responsibility is assumed. We might say that children of this age are not yet fully socially adapted, although they have the intellectual knowledge of what lines their behaviour should follow if they are to be socially accepted.

BEHAVIOUR OF TODDLERS

If we go back still further and observe toddlers in an environment in which they are allowed free expression of their impulses, the difference between the child's and the adult's social behaviour at that early age is much more pronounced, so much so that similarities are difficult to find. The most striking difference is certainly the variety of the toddler's actions and the intensity with which they are pursued while they last. A child engaged in playing with a toy may appear quite happy in his occupation until he sees another child with another toy which attracts his attention. Within a second we hear the screams of the second child who has been robbed of his possession ; a quarrel is in progress in which the other small occupants of the room join with obvious pleasure. The child who has taken away the toy and so started all this upheaval does not feel in the least guilty, but regards it as his right to take whatever he wants from any other child, nothing but the superior strength of the other preventing him from doing so. Unless they are under constant supervision, such children push and scratch and bite each other without any regard for the suffering of their victim, and the glee in their faces will convince even the superficial observer that they enjoy hurting another child with whom they will play happily a few minutes later. They may be very attached to the nurse so long as their desires are being fulfilled, but if they cannot get the toy they want, or if they are not fed when hungry, they will be angry and even show hatred towards the person by whom at other times they like to be cuddled. These small children love to play with dirt, they do not dislike sticky fingers, they do not mind wetting themselves or showing off their naked bodies. Feelings of shame, disgust or pity seem to be wholly absent; the toddlers are intent only on doing what gives them the greatest pleasure for the moment. And this pleasure is mostly gained by activities which, if present in the adult, would be classified as criminal, insane or perverse. Charming though small children may be at certain times, at others, and especially if many toddlers of the same age are together in a nursery, they give the impression of being little savages. They certainly are not socially adapted, for they have no regard for the desires of other people and do not submit of their own free will to demands made upon them. Looked at from another angle, we might say that they do not as yet show any signs of conscience. Their actions are governed solely by their impulses and by their desire to gain as much pleasure as possible and to avoid displeasure.

Familiarity with the behaviour of very small children tends to make us formulate the question in a different way from that with which we started, namely why some people are antisocial and others not. It seems really much more astonishing that so many of these little savages develop into socially adapted human beings than that some of them do not reach that stage. And it is even more astonishing that the taming of the antisocial impulses so freely expressed at this early age takes place in a comparatively short time: we have seen that a child of 8, even if not always able to do the expected thing, is already more or less socially adapted.

An understanding of the development towards social adaptation should be of considerable importance to those who are called to deal with human beings who have failed to achieve it. Such knowledge will also shed a new light on the influence of those environmental factors which predispose to antisocial development.

NEW FORMULATION OF PROBLEM

The problem is really this: we have a small human being who is governed solely by his impulses, the satisfaction of which gives him pleasure. Many of these impulses are antisocial. After a few years we see that a majority of these toddlers have become socially adapted. A few remain who still show characteristics reminding one of the toddler, though intellectually they have reached the same stage as the adapted children. Surely the first step towards an understanding of these children should be to investigate what factors, environmental or otherwise, have brought about social adaptation in the majority.

This task is not as simple as it may appear at first sight. There is no possibility of conducting a controlled experiment with a child's impulses and emotions as there is when studying its intellectual growth. Not until the psycho-analytic method made it possible to study the unconscious (that buried part of the mind which reaches down into the early years of existence) could a comprehensible picture of the emotional development during the first years of life be obtained. Deep down in the unconscious these old antisocial impulses which we have seen expressed in the toddler are still alive, and influence the thoughts and actions of the adult. It was from the investigation into the unconscious motives of adults and from the study of the symptoms of neurotic persons that the first knowledge of the emotional development of the child and with it of the fate of these early antisocial instincts could be reconstructed. Since then, psycho-analytical observation of children of all ages has amply confirmed the first assumptions and has filled in gaps in our knowledge. The result, which was at first very astonishing to the investigator, has shown that the capacity of the small child for emotional experiences is far greater than was hitherto suspected, and that the modification of the primary antisocial impulses itself leads to character formation. Furthermore, it was seen that the way in which the primary impulses are modified is to a large extent influenced by environmental factors, though the processes involved proved to be very complicated.

If then we are going to try to understand how social adaptaation is brought about, it will be necessary to follow up the whole of the emotional development of the child during the first years of life, with special stress on the modification of the primary antisocial impulses. This picture of the child's emotional development will enable us to point to those specific environmental factors which further a positive development, and to estimate the relative importance of those environmental conditions which show a positive correlation with the incidence of delinquency.

¹ Freud made his discoveries concerning the development of the child's emotional life by the psycho-analysis of neurotic adult patients. In 1909 he undertook the first analysis of a child (8a) which fully confirmed the facts hitherto set out. The method of child analysis has been developed from this time onwards and has made possible a more detailed study of the emotional content of the first years of life. Mainly owing to Anna Freud's work, many details have been made clearer and the development of the Ego has been more closely scrutinized (7a). Nothing in Freud's original conception has been fundamentally changed. Many of the original findings of Freud have been fully accepted by child psychology (as for instance the importance of the mother-child relationship, jealousy amongst siblings, infantile sexuality, and so on) though the author of these discoveries is not always quoted.

Within the last fifteen years M. Klein (15) and her followers have propounded a theory of mental development which deviates in fundamental principles from Freud's original theory, though it still makes use of Freudian terminology. The confusion arising out of this mixture of two fundamentally opposed theories (Freud's theory maintaining contact with biology, Kleinian theory disregarding the relationship between physical and mental development altogether) has been recently clarified by Glover (10).

The emotional development of the child as outlined in these pages has as its theoretical background Freud's original theory and such additions as are based on the principles of psycho-analysis (2, 7). This theory allows of an explanation of the facts as we find them in our clinical work with adult and child patients, and it is so far the only theory of mental life which satisfactorily explains the development towards antisocial behaviour.

CHAPTER II

SOME PROBLEMS OF INSTINCT-THEORY

The impulses which we have seen expressed in the toddler are expressions of instinctive needs. Some theoretical considerations about the nature of instincts are therefore unavoidable as a basis for our investigations. There is controversy among psychologists as to the number of instincts which can be distinguished from one another. If the object of observation is the adult and if the method of observation is a behaviouristic or introspective one, and if, furthermore, the instinct is regarded as a purely psychological manifestation, any number of instinctive urges can be and have been assumed.

FREUD'S THEORY OF INSTINCTS

Freud (8c) on the basis of his psycho-analytical experiences maintained that an instinct is a manifestation on the borderline between physiology and psychology. He defined the instinct as a stimulus arising inside the body as distinct from stimuli which arrive at our organs of perception from the outside. This difference of location carries with it intrinsic differences. If, for instance, a strong light falls on our eyes, we can avoid the disagreeable sensation by shutting them, that is, by flight. If a stimulus arises inside the body, it cannot be avoided by flight, and therefore continues to exert its influence, causing a rising tension which is experienced as a disagreeable sensation. This tension can be alleviated by an adequate action which brings about relief and is felt as satisfaction. Under certain circumstances, satisfaction can be delayed, but in the meantime the tension in the body is rising and the urge for gratification grows stronger. The satisfaction of the instinctive urge in relieving the tension is experienced as pleasure. This process can be clearly observed in all manifestations of the sexual instinct.

The source of an instinct is always a bodily organ, and this origination places the instinct in the field of physiology. The tension caused by the rising urge and the relaxation after satisfaction has been attained produce a measurable alteration in the balance of the autonomic nervous system. It is to this organic origin that the instinct owes its driving power. The feeling which accompanies the instinctive urge, namely the emotion, belongs to the realm of psychology. With this biological basis in mind, Freud adopted a dualistic theory of instincts. In studying neurotic individuals by the psycho-analytic method he found that he could reduce the number of instincts to two main groups, from which the very varied instinctive urges of the adult take their origin. These two groups of instincts, which he first described as the “self-preservative and sexual instinct” (8c), and later on formulated as the “life- and death-instinct” (8d), both seek satisfaction. As their aims are in opposition to each other, the individual has to find a satisfactory way of dealing with them. It is this struggle which constitutes the manifestations of life.

It is not the purpose of this book to go into any detail concerning the theories of instinct. It is sufficient to bear in mind that we start from the assumption that the instinctive urges in the small child belong to two groups, the life- and death-instincts, or, for practical purposes, the sexual and aggressive instincts. The sexual instincts are derivatives of the life-instinct and the aggressive instincts of the death-instinct.

FUSION OF INSTINCTS

One more theoretical explanation will be necessary before we can understand the instinctive manifestations as w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• THE SOCIOLOGY OF YOUTH AND ADOLESCENCE
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• II. THE PSYCHIATRIC APPROACH : OLD AND NEW METHODS
• III. THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC APPROACH
• IV. THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• PART I THE DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS SOCIAL ADAPTATION
• PART II THE FAILURE OF SOCIAL ADAPTATION
• PART III TREATMENT
• Index