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With extraordinary frequency the criminal's reply to the formal question on his education is, “I went as far as the eighth grade (or the seventh grade) and left school at the age of thirteen (or fourteen).” The important fact is that for some reason or reasons the grammar school education falls short of completion by one or two years. The usual reasons advanced are, “I didn't like school” or “I wanted to go to work.” The dislike for school is the negative of a positive but hidden counterpart. The meaning of “Going to work” might occupy a special analytic study. Whether or not the non-criminal as frequently gives up his schooling at about the same grade and age, it is not possible to state. There is, to my knowledge, no real information on this question.*
Many educators and criminologists feel that the relations of schooling to crime are close and they somewhat vaguely feel that if the potential criminal could in some way be kept in school for a longer period of time his tendencies to crime would diminish. This is reminiscent of the teacher keeping the boy after school for misbehavior. However, because the ordinary instruments of study do not examine the problems deeply enough, the usual programs in this field are vague and unpromising. Psychoanalysis of a criminal convicted of robbery shows an important constellation determining his inability to go beyond the seventh grade. School children's phantasies obstructing their educational progress are not new to analysts (see the work of M. Klein).
A slip in speech during the fourth month of analysis opened the approach to the difficulty. While narrating a long dream, the