A Psychoanalytic Theory of Juvenile Delinquency

Abstract

This paper offers a psychoanalytic theory of juvenile delin quency, the essence of which is that juvenile delinquency (like other behavioral disturbances that tend to appear during puberty and adolescence) often reflects an inner struggle between a per son's moral faculty—his superego—and the oral, anal, and phallic impulses of early childhood that are revived in him just before puberty. The view is advanced that juvenile delinquency may result not only when a person's superego is too strict or has criminal tendencies but more especially when it is too weak, defective, or incomplete to control properly these resurrected primitive, violent, and amoral—indeed, "criminalistic"—urges of infancy. In addition, some of the factors responsible for the im proper formation of the superego (maternal deprivation, incon sistent discipline, etc.) are considered, as are ways of strengthen ing the superego through better methods of child rearing. Em phasis is on the need for better inner controls, as well as better outer or societal controls, to curb the growing incidence of ju venile delinquency.