November 9, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



461 



certaining the condition of all elements in the 

 population, it is to be hoped that the observa- 

 tions taken in Britain and America will be 

 capable of direct comparison — for, beyond 

 doubt, the hvHk of the population of the United 

 States has a British ancestry. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Mental Conflicts and Misconduct. By Wil- 

 liam Healy. Boston, Little, Brown & Com- 

 pany, 1917. Pp. 330. 



Like earlier studies from the psychopathic 

 institute attached to the Chicago Juvenile 

 Court, this work emphasizes the need of 

 painstaking inquiry into the experience and 

 inner life .of the individual delinquent; if the 

 treatment given him is to be in any sense 

 remedial. The present book illustrates the 

 author's method of " mental analysis," a proc- 

 ess somewhat akin to the " psychoanalysis " 

 of Freud, though not making the same pre- 

 tensions to penetrate to the very depths of 

 the individual's make-up, and not operating 

 with dreams, symbols or association tests, 

 but by a straightforward conversational ap- 

 proach, in which the subject is sympatheti- 

 cally asked to tell " if anything is worrying 

 him." This line of approach is especially in- 

 dicated when the subject shows signs of an 

 " inner urge " towards misdoing, without de- 

 riving any material benefit, but only painful 

 consequences, from his misdoing. In such 

 cases, there is reason to suspect a "mental 

 conflict," which may be discovered by the 

 analysis and then cleared up by proper hand- 

 ling, with the happy result that the miscon- 

 duct ceases. 



The mental conflict discovered by analysis 

 is often of the following stamp. A young 

 child, previously a good child, and often of 

 good intelligence and from a good home, is 

 incited by some bad boy or girl or older 

 person to sex practices, and very often at the 

 same time to stealing or truancy. The child 

 rejects the sex practices, though often obsessed 

 by the thought of them or by the bad words 

 used in connection with them, but begins to 

 steal or run away from home. The author 

 interprets this to mean that an " inner urge," 



primarily directed towards sex behavior but 

 prevented from finding an outlet there, es- 

 capes through the channel of stealing, etc., 

 which has become accidentally associated in 

 the child's mind with the sex matter. From 

 such causes, quite a career of delinquency 

 may be entered upon by children who are 

 fundamentally normal and healthy-minded. 



As judged from a series of two thousand 

 juvenile recidivists, the per cent, of cases of 

 delinquency in which mental conflict of this 

 general type enters as a causative factor is 

 about seven — more rather than less. It is 

 not the " rough " type of juvenile offender 

 that is here in question, nor the mentally 

 defective. Usually the cases show good men- 

 tality and good social qualities. They are 

 not moody and " shut-in," nor egocentric, 

 nor, indeed, of any peculiar mental or temp- 

 eramental type (unless, as is possible from the 

 tests given, the imagery or mental representa- 

 tion of these individuals is unusually active 

 and vivid). Heredity does not appear as an 

 important factor; but it is rather the social 

 or mental environment of the child that gen- 

 erates the conflict. Specially important in 

 this regard is the lack of confidential re- 

 lations between the child and his parents, 

 leading the child to keep his difficulties to 

 himself, when a frank discussion of them 

 with a sympathetic adult would resolve the 

 conflict. 



The treatment appropriate to this species 

 of delinquents is by no means punishment — 

 an entirely superficial and notably unsuccess- 

 ful reaction — ^but, first of all, mental analysis 

 directed to discovering the genesis of the mis- 

 conduct, and then " reeducation," including 

 the giving of suitable information and the 

 development of an intelligent attitude towards 

 the causes of conflict; further, the establish- 

 ment of confidential relations between the 

 delinquent child and an adult adviser, and 

 often the removal of features of the environ- 

 ment that suggest misconduct. 



Psychologically, the author's case-material 

 is of great interest, and the interpretation 

 given, in terms of mental conflict, is likewise 

 of considerable interest, though it does not 



