Problems of Child Delinquency
- Author:
Maud A. Merrill.
oeorge Harrap & Co., London. 15s.
This book is a major contribution to the literature on delinquency. Professor Merrill surveys the resources of the clinician in the tasks of assessing social environment and understanding delinquent personalities; and she describes the use of intelligence tests and projective techniques. The behaviour of delinquent children is understandable only in terms of the basic needs of the individual child and of his opportunities, or lack of opportunities, for satisfying those needs. In almost every case there are many contributing factors, social, educational and personal.
Important and clinically tested techniques are brought together and many previous relevant studies are evaluated. The psychodynamics of delinquent children are lucidly described, and illustrated vividly from admirable case records.
The sections on the interests and attitudes of delinquent children and non-delinquent controls, and on motivations, merit careful study; but perhaps the most interesting chapter is that on the use of projective techniques, including play, in exploring the delinquent child’s private worlds. Other workers will surely be encouraged to employ such methods more widely. The reader will agree that paper-and-pencil tests of personality yield little reward for the time involved.
The author’s experience is that the influence exerted by teachers in personal ways is even more important in the lives of delinquent children than any needs served by curriculum adaptations, a situation worthy of further study.
The factors which influence later social adjustment after treatment are discussed in a final chapter, opening up a wide field for research which has been singularly neglected in Great Britain. The book is richly interspersed throughout with statistical tables. Indeed it is the scrupulous application of scientific principle and method throughout this work which is its principal merit, and it should find a place on the shelves of all workers in this field.
J.D.W.P.
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