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This book presents an account of a research project designed to compare the “divergent routes taken in development by neurotic and delinquent children from their earliest years”. The material consists of case histories of fifty neurotic and fifty delinquent boys and girls, matched for age and intelligence, chosen from over 1000 children referred to three predominantly rural child guidance clinics between 1946 and 1949. An attempt is made to isolate certain features of behaviour and emotional development as seen against the background of home and social conditions. The information collected by the clinic team covers all aspects of the children's lives, including early patterns of weaning and feeding; relationships with parents, siblings, and other children; the economic circumstances in the home and relationships between the parents; school records, social behaviour, and leisure activities.
Bennett, who is both a psycho-analyst and a clinical psychologist, states that the reason for this research study is to show that certain types of psycho-analytical data can be verified by statistical methods, and her book is a courageous attempt to bridge the gap between these seemingly incompatible disciplines. She uses the data obtained to test hypotheses derived from socio-psychological studies of delinquency and from psychoanalytical theories of character formation. Her findings confirm those of earlier studies, showing that neurotics tend to come from stable homes in which there is frequently evidence of neurotic disturbance of the personalities of the parents. It is also confirmed that delinquents tend to come from unstable homes where discipline is inconsistent, that they are less intelligent than neurotic children, and that their difficulties tend to appear at a later age. The previous view that delinquents come from the lower-income group was not confirmed.
The psycho-analytic formulations underlying the work were originally worked out with the late Kate Friedlander, and e