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1st September 1949.
Dear Mr. Hodge:
Thank you for writing to me about my letter printed in the Times. I am interested in what you say,
You will easily understand that in my view the punishment of crime has nothing to do with doing the criminal good. He should really be treated as ill, if the community could allow it, which it can only do to some extent. It could allow it more if there were knowledge and facilities available for successful treatments, but it
does not interest the public unconscious that criminal symptoms could be treated, i.e. theoretically could be treated.
Your point about the value to the criminal of expiation and propitiation is an immensely interesting one. To some extent the criminal comes in (as a member of society) in his relief at punishment for (even his own) crime. Nevertheless psychology must diverge from the theological view here because the latter have not yet (I feel) been adjusted to the new findings in respect of the unconscious.
We regularly find that at the start of anti-social tendencies in a human being (always in childhood) there is an ordinary strong sense of guilt which (as part of the illness) does not become attached to stealing (or whatever the symptom is) because the individual becomes split. Help given at this point enables the patient to become conscious of a great deal of the conflict and so to reintegrate and to become able to feel guilty about the stealing.
As an example, a child may start stealing because of a feeling of loss of being loved, without knowing at all what is happening. When asked why do you steal, he at first says, truthfully, that he does not know. If the question is repeated he invents reasons rather than feel an ass, or mad, and then (lest the question be asked again) he steals for definite reasons, which he knows. But this third stage is part of a process of hardening. There is no guilt feeling available because the whole thing has become a defensive construction. To reach the guilt one has to get to the