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In this encyclopaedic volume of over 600 pages Mr. Burt has included a prodigious amount of material of interest to the psychologist and the psychiatrist, to juvenile court workers and social workers in general, to teachers, doctors and parents. A psychologist and an educator himself and a believer in the psychoanalytic method in getting at individual difficulties of youthful offenders, the author has also the social worker's point of view. He has given us a clearly and scientifically written and exceptionally many-sided and comprehensive book.
Mr. Burt, who is professor of Education in the University of London and psychologist in the Education Department of the London County Council, offers a wealth of statistical material on juvenile delinquency from British governmental reports and studies of his own of delinquent children contrasted with control groups of nondelinquents. He tells us in detail of British laws and the mechanism of British procedure in dealing with childish law breakers. He analyzes causes and explains treatment of misconduct in the young, but the many very human and charmingly written stories of the youngsters he has examined and which help fill a large part of the volume should save the book from any suspicion of dullness to the reader who does not care for statistics and generalities.
The writer makes interesting comparisons of problems and methods of dealing with antisocial youth in England, from which his own data is drawn, and in the United States, work in which he is following with close attention. What countries other than the British Isles and the United States are doing he does not attempt to discuss.
The whole book is written from the point of view, as the author says, that delinquency is merely an outstanding example of ordinary youthful naughtiness and that study of the psychology of young culprits will throw