Delinquency, a Defense Against Loss of Objects and Reality1

The following report and discussion of the analysis of a delinquent boy in his latency should be of interest for two reasons: (1) The etiological factors in the patient's delinquency are clearly revealed in his anamnesis. (2) There is a relative paucity of published material gained in child analysis from delinquents in their latency. This abbreviated clinical paper presents primarily those facts which have an immediate bearing on the subject of the patient's delinquency.

One of the crucial stages in the child's development is the begining of the latency period. The outcome of the resolution of the oedipus complex has far-reaching consequences in regard to character development, intellectual maturity and social adaptation. The most important result of the decline of the oedipal phase is the establishment and consolidation of the superego by a process of internalization and desexualization. The balance between superego and id depends upon the strength of the mediating agent—the ego. If a relatively well-developed ego can influence either side and prevent disastrous inner psychic battles, the child's judging mind is open for further identificatory processes and desexualized object relationships. If, however, one of the driving agents—the superego or the instinctual impulses—dominates in the child's struggle, a psychic equilibrium will not be achieved. In cases in which the superego is unusually rigid, it has lost its character as a protector and its functions as regulator for instinctual demands. Then the superego's severity may be understood in terms of the child's own aggressive disposition and the preference for parental prohibitions instead of an established identification with former love objects. In spite of its