THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



routes will remain an essential part of education and social 

 direction. That conviction has found expression in the 

 world-wide movement for mental hygiene. Suddenly the 

 human scene has become a clinic, and sick humanity — the 

 mentally lame, halt, and blind — groping their way uncer- 

 tainly in a world too complex for their limited powers of 

 adjustment, cry out for relief. To answer this appeal 

 exceeds the combined resources of the psychologist and 

 psychiatrist, aided by law, church, and social institutions. 

 We seem to be living in a psychoneurotic as well as a 

 psychological age. 



There is one phase of psychopathology having such 

 fundamental influence upon the integrity of the social 

 structure that it alone would demand the development of a 

 "psycho-clinic"; namely, that of crime. Crime, we are pre- 

 pared to admit, is a social-economic manifestation. Eco- 

 nomic pressure, playing the game of self-interest too 

 roughly, using ingenuity to avoid labor, short-circuiting 

 the currents of profit, exploiting the feeble, is a sufficient 

 temptation to human nature to make eternal vigilance and 

 effective education the price of public safety. None the less 

 the prevalence of crime is as intimately a question of 

 maladjustment, neural inadequacy, and psychopathic 

 trends. All that society demands is crime insurance. The 

 nature of the criminal instincts is a matter for psychological 

 diagnosis; treatment must follow psychological guidance. 

 As a remedial measure the present system has failed. Crime 

 shades into delinquency, and delinquency into minor mal- 

 adjustments. Crime is so largely a juvenile phenomenon, a 

 question of management of unruly urges, that it stands 

 as a constant menace to the security of the maturing 

 process. Criminal psychology^ covers every aspect of 

 society's dealings with offenders. As a clinical problem, 



^ See Gross, H., "Criminal Psychology," Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 

 19n. 



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