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This volume, the latest of Dr. Abrahamsen's books dealing with the criminal personality, presents a good, though not always integrated, summary of many findings of other authorities as well as himself, on the motivation for criminal behavior. Much of the material is covered in the simple, clear and concise formulations of psychodynamics as seen in such anti-social acting-out individuals as the juvenile delinquent, the sex offender and the murderer.
Fortunately, Dr. Abrahamsen does not pretend to offer an oversimplified monistic explanation for criminal behavior as too many psychiatrists do. He shows the interrelation of crime with such major nosological entities as obsessive compulsive neuroses, character neuroses, psychopathy (which he correctly labels as an extreme form of character neurosis) and the manic-depressive cyclical personality.
It is in attempting to present some of the statistical material on criminal behavior that the lack of integration is most notable. For example, he quotes without comment, the fact that the Gluecks found that 51.4% of the delinquents and 44.3% of the non-delinquents were mentally abnormal (a not very significant difference) and includes in the same paragraph the statement that Drs. Healy and Bronner found that 91% of delinquents and only 13% of their non-delinquent siblings had deep mental disturbances. He does not explain this difference.
Similarly, he indicates that 80% of criminal psychopaths on whom Daniel Silverman did the electroencephalographic studies had abnormal or borderline tracings, while Jenkins and Pacalla found that there is not a high correlation between criminal behavior and abnormal electroencephalographic tracings. It might have been helpful had there been some effort made to explain such disparaties which are found too often in the so-called “scientific statistical” studies.
Some of Dr. Abrahamsen's most telling material is devoted to describing the criminal lack of interest that our society displays in attempting