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10th August 1949.
Sir,
In your faithful reporting of public affairs you have published several reports, comments and letters in this past week on juvenile delinquency and on the management of Holloway Gaol and on the knotty problem of crime and insanity. It is very seldom that the comments of a psycho-analyst are asked for or printed; instead it is assumed that the psychologist has an attitude, probably a sentimental one. The idea that psycho-analysis has no attitude, but that it can enlighten, seldom percolates.
There is a great danger in the present trend, which some of us predicted. A sentimental swing toward the antisocial child or adult must sooner or later be followed by a reaction. Indeed the sentimentalist in regard to crime is using the criminal for the expression of his own hidden criminality, and is in the same position (but less openly so) as the ordinary man or woman who enjoys crime in the Sunday papers or who reads detective stories. The practice of the Courts must be founded on something more sure than sentimentalism, either on the deep feelings of unsentimental people who can reach to the criminal in themselves, or else on the thinking-out of those who can take into account the unconscious.
There is a very real contribution which psycho-analysis could make, even now, if it were asked to do so. One example could be given right away, and perhaps usefully given. It is this: