Discussion of Seymour Boorstein's Article, A Psychoanalytic Overview of the Offender: Implications for Therapy

I admire Dr. Boorstein's paper. In a well reasoned, comprehensive manner it delivers just what it promises: a true overview of past and current psychoanalytic contributions to the understanding and treatment of offenders. Hence a congenial comment on the overall relationship between criminological and psychotherapeutic problems in general may be permissible.

Not by coincidence does Dr. Boorstein advocate a thorough exploration of relatively new models like the therapeutic community and the informal, partly self-help Synanon pattern. In emphasizing the community's role in the rehabilitation (and, by implication, in the production) of offenders, Dr. Boorstein reasserts convincingly two basic psychoanalytic, originally revolutionary claims: 1. Psychoanalysis, not satisfied to suggest one specific treatment method for a specific type of disturbance, aims at a comprehensive understanding of human behavior in its totality; hence the range of psychoanalytic

intervention may be legitimately expanded to apply to all forms of behavior, deviant or otherwise, rather than remain confined to historically determined, artificially carved-out areas. 2. Precisely the individualistic focus on the inner processes of the patient also exposes implicitly those external and interpersonal influences that molded the individual to become what he is.

Specific psychoanalytic treatment methods depend on relatively complex, sophisticated inner assumptions and outer preconditions. Yet this minimal set of basic requirements was and is seldom provided by the responsible authorities in criminology inside or outside of prison walls. To be sure, in this country for the last 30 years offenders have been treated by and large more leniently, with more understanding and with more humanitarian concern than before; but leniency, understanding and humanitarianism that are admirable motives and desirable goals of psychoanalytic treatment should not be confused with effective treatment measures, let alone with