You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Today's frequent pleas and complaints against “juvenile delinquency” are often accompanied by the bewilderment which seizes the parental generation when it suddenly comes face to face with its youngsters becoming adolescents and young adults, even in less inordinate cases than those of “juvenile delinquency.”
The “angry” young men and women of today are probably more revolutionary than were their predecessors at a similar age. But the angry young men of today attribute their anger to the fact that their elders do not accept or allow the full scope of their claims to independence.
Perhaps if we knew more about “independence” we might understand their problem somewhat better.
Independence in life starts with the toddler's first efforts to waddle along. Some children achieve success remarkably early, while others take considerably longer. Its antecedents can be traced back to successful or unsuccessful weaning. Patients who manifested a preponderance of oral-depressive features in childhood were usually not eager walkers. Much depends on the mother's over-anxious attitude or, conversely, her lack of care.7
The connections between clinging dependence and the child's developmental movement towards independence were amply investigated by the Hungarian psychoanalytical school (Ferenczi, Hermann,