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In this paper the author contrasts the emotional development of normal children with that of delinquents. The normal child spends the first five years of life in satiating his sexual and aggressive impulses; he also learns to master them through the development of defense mechanisms and through identifications with the friendly adults in the family. Successful completion of this process, together with the physiological decline in instinct strength which occurs at the age of five, leaves the individual free during the latency period to devote himself to activities which strengthen the ego. He turns his energies to the acquisition of knowledge, to new ways of achieving recognition and gratification, and to attempts at acquiring a feeling of group identification. The increased energy produced by the maturing gonads at puberty faces the child again with his old problem of mastering instinctual drives. The delight in dirt, gluttony, peeping, masturbation, untidiness, and moodiness, so typical for the adolescent, represent attempts at defense against instinct.
The delinquent is unable to achieve the balance which normal children ultimately acquire. A frustrating environment in his early years leaves him with his instinctual drives unsatisfied at the beginning of the latency period. Consequently, he is unable to renounce them like the normal child and continues to seek infantile modes of gratification. He thus has little energy available for ego strengthening activities. Since he expects other people to be as hostile and frustrating as his family, he is unable to make those identifications and social ties which strengthen the ego of the normal child. At puberty, the delinquent has no reserve of defense mechanisms and character strengths with which to meet the accession of instinctual energy.
Treatment of the delinquent adolescent is so difficult because there is so small a residue of healthy personality with which to work. The author believes that the therapist sh