Wayward Youth: By August Aichhorn, with a Foreword by Sigmund Freud, and a note about the author by the Editors. (Putnam, London, 1936. Pp. xiii + 236. Price 10 s. 6 d.)

In 1925, when Verwahrolste Jugend was first published, it was generally recognized that its author had made a brilliant use of his psycho-analytic knowledge in the treatment of juvenile delinquency. He was then director of an institution for young delinquents, which he has since given up, but he has continued his work on delinquency. Reading the work again in the English translation, one is most impressed by Aichhorn's insight into the problem of his young people and his powers of adapting the analytical technique to the solution and treatment of their difficulties. It is made clear that sympathy and kindness would not have by themselves helped the delinquents; it required in addition that knowledge and assurance derived from the understanding which psycho-analysis had given him. Freud points out in his introduction that the treatment of the wayward or delinquent child is not the same as the treatment of an adult neurotic; as a rule the psycho-analytic method must be modified to meet the new condition. Aichhorn has shewn how this can be done. He points out that for this work one 'must take into consideration many other factors, psychiatric, sociological, economic and cultural'.

The first chapter has been re-written, for this translation, so that we may take it this English translation represents the author's considered opinion of a work written eleven years ago. One of the clues to Aichhorn's success is furnished by the edition's brief note about him: 'Fat, jolly and comfortable looking, he is a well-known and greatly beloved figure in Vienna'.

The translation, from a rather colloquial Viennese, deserves more than a word of praise.