You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Delinquency should be considered as a symptom and not as a disease entity. It may be a manifestation of every kind of psychopathology. None the less delinquent acts which get their authors into trouble represent a failure of reality testing, and
certain common features in the psychology of the delinquent may be formulated.
The vicissitudes of the strivings for dependency play an important role. The delinquent, because of his experience, and by projection, sees the world as hostile. Never able to give up his fantasy of omnipotence, which he regards as his only safeguard, he has not delegated omnipotence to parental figures or their substitutes. His dependency-needs are intense, but are felt as a threat against which he defends himself by reversal and projection in the formula: 'I do not need you or depend on you or love you; I am omnipotent; I hate you. You, the adult, are malevolent, so I can fight you without guilt.' Action has become a means of evasion of reality rather than of adaptation to it. External controls are not internalized, and their validity is denied in a way that interferes with reality testing. Psychosis may thus be simulated; in this state aggression or other acting out is substituted for psychic symptoms or secondary elaborations.
This acting out causes a continuing lack of socialization and therefore of opportunity for development of the various ego functions.
(Based on Author's Summary)