Juvenile Delinquency

The Royal Medico-Psychological Association was recently invited to prepare a memorandum for tfr London County Council Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. The Subcommittee entrusted with the preparation of this memorandum considered that they would most profitably? (a) formulate the principles governing normal social development as generally accepted by th? psychiatrist; (b) discuss the relationship between psychiatric ill health and delinquency; (c) outline the part played by Child Guidance and Psychiatric Clinics in treating Juvenile Delinquency! (d) suggest how the problem may be most usefully met. In view of the topical importance of the subject and the frequency with which the psychiatrical!) informed are invited to elucidate these questions to interested lay bodies, it has been thought useful to publish these observations. In the child of normal endowment and potentiality the mature pattern of social behaviour depends upon the pattern of behaviour established in early family relationships. Normal behaviour presupposes that the child in the home should have met firstly with stable and secure affection. This is a biological need without which he cannot develop normally. In its absence, relative or, rarely, complete, he will be liable to a wide variety of neurotic disturbances. For his social development the most important of these is that, lacking affection in his early years, his capacity to return affection is atrophied, stunted or distorted. Yet it is only through the child's affection that he can rightly be influenced to conform to parental standards. In the early years the child's motive is to retain the approval of the mother and father who give him love and security and whom he loves in turn. As he grows older it is from those in the home and outside whom he loves, admires and desires to emulate that he forms the standards that will later govern his own life. These truisms to the psychiatrically minded are sometimes disputed or underestimated by those who, coming from a normal home themselves , usually deal with normal children. Affection for a child in his own or a substitute home is fortunately so general that its immense biological role in development may be overlooked , much as the need for oxygen might be overlooked by the uninformed who had never seen or experienced suffocation. Rebuke or punishment does not of itself provide a motive for the child. It only underlines withdrawal of approval. The strict but loveless home may produce a severe delinquent. …