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1st September 1949.
Dear Mr. Hazlehurst:
Thank you for your letter about mine to the Times. I like your classification into two essentials and two accidentals.1
It would interest you, I am sure, how in psycho-analytic and also ordinary psycho-therapeutic work, especially with children, the anti-social compulsions come out as symptoms of illness. Especially at their earliest stages it is often quite clear that stealing is an unwelcome thing turning up in the life of the child and bewildering him (or her). Soon, as the child does not understand why he must steal, there comes about a hardening and a whole host of secondary motives, and by that time there is almost no hope of effecting a cure. In the early stages we do seem to bring about a cure in many cases.
Stealing has practically no more relation to poverty and want than civil murder has to persecution.
Yours truly, D.W. Winnicott