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

Dr. Boorstein is to be congratulated on the wide scope of his paper and his courageous attempt to build a theoretical background for psychotherapy of criminal offenders—a diffuse, unwilling yet needy group of non-patients.

The present reviewer had a curious sense akin to déjà vu on reading this paper, a sense of revisiting a house he once knew to find the original structure unchanged but the disposition of the furnishings reorganized, some treasured objects displaced, others overshadowed and de-emphasized.

At the time of the building's construction, there were few workers available and little interest on the part of the prospective purchaser—the public. For, in truth, the construction of the edifice of criminal psychotherapy has a long and gloomy history. Today more hands are ready to assist its construction: society is more eager to invest its emotions and hopes in an eventual therapeutic program for criminals.

So it was to be expected, on reading the “Psychoanalytic Overview,” to find the structure modernized with a few timbers of theory added here, a sagging floor of practice shimmed up there, windows of insight enlarged here and a broader dimension given the entire structure. Hence, in light of the déjà vu experience, this review may be more personal than usual. But enough of metaphor!

At the outset, it must be stated that a “psychoanalytic overview” of implications for therapy of criminals is apt to be distorted if society—the one vital factor in handling criminal offenders—is excluded. Increasing insight into crime-as-behavior in contrast to crime-as-evil (and Dr. Boorstein explicitly takes this basic position)

brings the inevitable conclusion that psychologic factors cannot be separated from social and cultural ones in crime.

Thus, we can no longer speak of a Criminal Class, a product of a socially-prejudiced view of crime characteristic of the pre-psychiatric era. Neither can we speak of a Criminal Type, a concept emerging from the early anthropological-descri