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.
The problem of the option of neurosis or indeed the option of any characteristic mental disorder is one that has always interested and frequently baffled psycho-analysts. Their attempted solutions have fully taxed the resources of differential diagnosis, of comparative aetiology, and of systematic metapsychology. Naturally, contrasting conditions (depression—paranoia; depression—criminal psychopathy; sadism—masochism) and contrasting phases of any one condition (manic depression) have offered tempting opportunities to arrive at conclusions, ranging from the general to the particular. Witness for example the general contrast of autoplastic and alloplastic mechanisms, or again the detailed search for specific variations in constitutional, endopsychic, and environmental factors operating at a series of developmental levels. Even where there is no obvious antithetical relationship to stimulate curiosity (neurosis—perversion), it is impossible to escape the problem of option. For if neurosis is the negative of perversion we must be in a position to establish what particular set of psychic circumstances determines the development of one rather than the other.
Miss Bennett has chosen to study yet another of these autoplastic-alloplastic contrasts, viz. the relation of neurosis to delinquency. Her original aim was in fact to test certain aspects of psycho-analytical theory about neurotic and delinquent children, using some of the systematic methods and tests of general psychology. Examining two selected groups (50 delinquent and 50 neurotic boys and girls observed at three rural Child Guidance centres), she arrived at two main conclusions: first, that in examining such cases, or indeed any psychiatric disability in childhood, it is necessary to combine the outlook of dynamic psychology with the 'technical methods of modern research work'; and, second, the accuracy of the psycho-analytic hypothesis that the major influences determining a child's development and behavi