J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 225 



and more difi&cult to foretell. With the human being the complexity ot 

 the inner situation has become enormous. The web of impulse and 

 motive is so intricately and so subtly interwoven that the introduction of 

 a new impulse and motive may come to have a result wholly unforeseen 

 and entirely different from the result intended. 



Hence, however simple the general psychological theory of punish- 

 ment may be, the practical difficulties of punishment in the concrete, 

 when its aim is the reformation of the delinquent, are very formidable. 

 One source of practical difficulty is the actual, and possibly innate, 

 differences between individuals, which make them respond in an entirely 

 dift'erent way to the same external situation. What is intensely dis- 

 agreeable to one individual may not seriously inconvenience another, and 

 may be positively pleasant to a third. Hence a punishment that is 

 effective with one individual may be quite ineffective with another. 

 There are even differences in the same individual at different times, so that 

 a punishment effective at one time may be quite ineffective at another, 

 even with the same individual. A second source of practical difficulty is 

 the fact that the effect produced by punishment has a very different 

 duration for dift'erent individuals. One extreme is illustrated by many 

 defective delinquents. 



The most important source of practical difficulty, however, is 

 frequently our almost complete ignorance of the inner conditions which 

 issue in any particular misdemeanour. This necessarily involves 

 ignorance of the effect which our punishment is likely to produce. As 

 far as the reformatory aspect of punishment is concerned, this is a very 

 serious matter. We have to deal with an individual, and we must know 

 the facts of that individual case. Any psychologist who has had 

 experience of conflict cases among juvenile delinquents can easily find 

 illustrations from his experience. The usual form of misdemeanour that 

 occurs is stealing, and frequently irrational and apparently motiveless 

 stealing. Thus money, jewellery, and all kinds of things may be stolen 

 and given away, or even thrown away. Until the inner conditions are 

 understood and the causes of the trouble removed, no kind of treatment 

 seems to be of any avail. Or sometimes, where punishment is apparently 

 successful in eliminating the tendency to one particular kind of mis- 

 demeanour, there is a criminal outbreak in a totally different direction, 

 the result of the punishment itself, which more than counterbalances any 

 apparent success. 



A typical conflict case is described by Healy. This was a girl of ten, 

 who for two years previous to coming under his notice had been addicted 

 to stealing. She stole from her parents, from neighbours, and from school. 

 Threats, whippings, expulsion from school were all of no avail. There was 

 no improvement when the child was given money to spend. In all other 

 respects her physical and mental condition appeared to be quite normal. 

 There was no hereditary taint that could be traced. Her school- work was 

 above the average. She liked games, and excelled in them. Apart from 

 the stealing, in fact, she presented a complete picture of normality. Only 

 after careful and prolonged inquiry did the real cause of the stealing come 

 to light. This was found to be an emotional conflict which had no direct 

 connection with stealing, but which nevertheless resulted in the stealing 



1926 a 



