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This book is initially a report of the transactions of the Topeka Conference on Cultural Factors in Delinquency, and thus represents the sum of the ideas of people from varying disciplines. However it has been written up skilfully
by the two editors, T. C. N. Gibbens and Robert H. Ahrenfeldt, so that the first half in particular has a continuous and individual flavour.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the book to those working in the psychological field is the chapter on Internal and External Controls. It is emphasised that there are “individual and cultural aspects of both kinds of control” and that these “do not correspond to a simple dichotomy of the psychological and the sociocultural approach”. The authors feel that consistency and persistence are needed if controls are to be adequately internalised and that the quality of internal controls also depends upon consistency in parental emotional attitudes, by which the child builds up an understanding of the moods, feelings and motives of others. The ways in which the culture may go on to reinforce or undermine controls is then shown. Without going into depth this book does show in an interesting way some of the connection between the individual's own progress towards integration and the cultural framework within which this takes place.