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I now give a detailed and complete description of a psychotherapeutic interview with a girl of 8 years who was brought on account of stealing. (There was also enuresis, but this was not beyond the parents' understanding and tolerance.) It is at the end of this long description that the reader will find the illustration of denial representing a dissociation in the child's personality structure. This is an important feature of the antisocial case, and explains the unconsciously motivated compulsion to steal making the child feel mad, so that at the start he or she seeks help.
The school had made it clear that Ada's stealing was giving trouble, and Ada would have to leave if the symptom persisted. It was practicable for me to see this girl once or even a few times, but she lived too far away for me to be able to think in terms of a treatment. It was therefore necessary for me to act on the basis that I must do everything possible in the first psychotherapeutic consultation. This was a hospital clinic case.
I saw the child without first seeing the mother who brought her. The reason for this was that I was not at this stage concerned with taking an accurate history; I was concerned with getting the patient to give herself away to me, slowly as she gained confidence in me, and deeply as she might find that she could take the risk.
Ada and I sat down together at a small table on which were small sheets of paper and a pencil, and a few crayons in a box.
There were two Psychiatric Social Workers and a visitor present, sitting a few yards away.
First published in Crime, Law and Corrections, ed. Ralph Slovenko (Charles C. Thomas, 1966), under the title ‘A Psychoanalytic View of the Antisocial Tendency’.
Page 220First Ada told me (in answer to my question) that she was 8 years old. She had a big sister, aged 16, and also a small brother of 41/2. Then she said she would like to draw: ‘My favourite hobby.’
(This was not an interview in which the