In a round-table discussion on problems of delinquency, Melitta Schmideberg presented the psychoanalytic viewpoint. She visualized contributory social conditions as trigger mechanisms that bring into play the repressed infantile dispositions. A genetic approach must therefore be employed in order to determine the significance of the delinquent act. Masochistic aggression proves to be a particularly significant factor in delinquency, Schmideberg believes. The aggression hides the masochism but gratifies it by bringing in its wake an inevitable retribution.