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It is not (as is usually supposed) the weakness or lack of a super-ego but the overpowering strictness of the super-ego, which is responsible for the characteristic behaviour of asocial and criminal persons. The small child first harbours against its parents aggressive impulses and phantasies, it then projects these on to them and thus it comes about that it develops a fantastic and distorted picture of the people around it. But the mechanism of introjection operates at the same time, so that these unreal imagos become internalized, with the result that the child feels itself to be ruled by fantastically dangerous and cruel parents—the super-ego within itself. The child protects himself against fear of his violent objects, both introjected and external, by redoubling his attacks upon them in his imagination. A vicious circle is set up, the child's anxiety impels it to destroy its objects, this leads to an increase of its own anxiety, and this once again urges it on against its objects; this vicious circle constitutes the psychological mechanism which seems to be at the bottom of asocial and criminal tendencies in the individual. The love which is always present behind the hate may itself lead to an increase of aggression because the remorse and sorrow it evokes may be too unbearable. As soon as the child's sadism diminishes and the character and function of its super-ego changes so that it arouses less anxiety and more sense of guilt, those defensive mechanisms which form the basis of a moral and ethical attitude are activated, and the child begins to have consideration for its objects, and to be amenable to social feelings. But in those cases in which, as a