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The subject of juvenile delinquency in the United States in the last two decades has been intimately related to the investigations and studies of Healy and Bronner. Their successive works have reflected the progress of the more serious efforts in the field of social work and in the structure and function of Child Guidance Clinics. The present work represents an attempt at an analysis of the causes and treatments in vogue at the present time. This project as first conceived was to be extensive, to last a period of ten years. Due to external circumstances it was reduced to a period of three years.
In each of three large cities, a fully staffed Child Guidance Clinic, consisting of psychiatrist, psychologist, social workers, etc., carried on its work simultaneously. The children, under the age of sixteen years, were referred by the Children's Court; their delinquencies ran the gamut commonly encountered. An object in view was to discover new orientations and guides in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment and a testing of older concepts. The number of families studied were 133, the number of delinquent children were 153 and the number of non-delinquent siblings studies were 145.
One interesting question posed, one which is often neglected in studies in criminology, asks why the other siblings were non-delinquents. In this project the authors used the non-delinquent siblings as controls in attempting to find out in what way the intimate relationships between the children and the other members of the family played a determining rôle in the development of delinquency or non-delinquency. The conclusion arrived at is that the delinquent child is the one who is frustrated, who feels he is not loved, while the non-delinquent child in the same environment is the one who finds a positive affectionate relationship with the parent or parents or suitable parent substitute. A group of twins were also studied from this angle. The authors propose a rather facile definition for d