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Rather unevenly developed, this book deals with psychological forces that determine criminal behavior and the potentialities of therapy. While
acknowledging the multiple causes of crime and the effects of childhood and later experiences ranging from physical disorders to political corruption, the task of psychiatry is to come to grips with impulsive behavior—'a first cause of antisocial behavior'. All other factors are merely contingencies of antisocial acts: 'Behavior is directly influenced by the complex mixture of emotion, instinct and impulse'.
There is the easily proven fact that in all of us there are antisocial impulses ordinarily repressed and unconscious. Fantasied death wishes or killings are by no means uncommon. The swindler's favorite dictum that there is 'larceny in everyone's heart' is not far from the truth. To what extent such impulses do or do not break through into action depends, of course, upon the development of conscience, early ethical training, the development of an adequate sense of reality, and also the nature of life experiences. Emotional immaturity, Bromberg emphasizes, is closely related to crime, not only in youthful offenders, but in psychopathic personalities of all ages as an arrest or deviation of development.
The longest chapter gives much attention to The Psychopathic Personality with subheadings of special types and with considerable disregard for nosological criteria of which elsewhere the author approves. Since he believes these individuals suffer from basic ego disturbances caused by early libidinal frustrations, they are basically remediable conditions; however, sociopsychological conditions make therapy difficult or even hazardous.
Some interesting instances of fire-setting (incorrectly captioned 'arson') are given in which unconscious dynamisms are interpreted as specific in determining not only the tendency to crime but also the specific forms of offense. Burglary, for example, is said to be 'a passive expression