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In this paper the author attempts to discover the reasons for chronic aggression in children. The most interesting section is a report of the clinical observations in his research to discover how early the defense mechanisms against aggression are active. To this purpose a 'group of sixty-four children, thirty-six boys and twenty-eight girls whose ages ranged between two and four years, were observed at Temple University Nursery School for a period of nine to eighteen months'.
Pearson comes to the conclusion that there are twenty different types of psychic defense against aggressive impulses: withdrawal from a social situation; inability to hear; denial, verbal or by gesture; secretiveness; distortion, by doing something which had been approved in one situation, in another where the act was one of veiled defiance; confusion of thought; confusion of speech; promises not to repeat the act in order to avoid punishment; rationalization by giving absurd reasons why they do or do not do certain things; inhibition (a) out of fear of retaliation, (b) inhibition of a substitute activity to which the aggressive impulse had been displaced. Reaction-formation; displacement; regression; the use of bodily organs to prevent expression of aggressive impulses; guilt often evident in the facial expression; restitution through punishment by which some children permit themselves to express an aggressive impulse by making restitution through suffering direct punishment, disapproval from adults, or the direct punishment of self-denial; change of direction; identification (a) with a permitting adult, (b) with a prohibiting adult, (c) with a permitting adult against the prohibiting one, (d) projection of the instinctual desires onto an object who is then punished (in fantasy), (e) identification with the effect of the aggressive impulse on the object. Projection of the aggressive impulse (a) on to inanimate objects, (b) to a part of the body, (c) to another child. This takes place in