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THE ANTISOCIAL tendency provides psycho-analysis with some awkward problems, problems of a practical as well as a theoretical nature. Freud, through his introduction to Aichhorn's Wayward Youth, showed that psycho-analysis not only contributes to the understanding of delinquency, but it is also enriched by an understanding of the work of those who cope with delinquents.
I have chosen to discuss the antisocial tendency, not delinquency. The reason is that the organized antisocial defence is overloaded with secondary gain and social reactions which make it difficult for the investigator to get to its core. By contrast the antisocial tendency can be studied as it appears in the normal or near-normal child, where it is related to the difficulties that are inherent in emotional development.
I will start with two simple references to clinical material:
For my first child analysis I chose a delinquent. This boy attended regularly for a year and the treatment stopped because of the disturbance that the boy caused in the clinic. I could say that the analysis was going well, and its cessation caused distress both to the boy and to myself in spite of the fact that on several occasions I got badly bitten on the buttocks. The boy got out on the roof and also he spilt so much water that the basement became flooded. He broke into my locked car and drove it away in bottom gear on the self-starter. The clinic ordered termination of the treatment for the sake of the other patients. He went to an approved school.
I may say that he is now 35, and he has been able to earn his living in a job that caters for his restlessness. He is married, with several children. Nevertheless I am afraid to follow up his case for fear that I should become
Read before the British Psycho-Analytical Society, 20th June, 1956.
Page 306involved again with a psychopath, and I prefer that society should continue to take the burden of his management.
It can easily be seen that the treatment for this boy should have been not