The Individual Delinquent
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: William Healy, A.B., M.D. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1914. Pp. 862.
All who are interested in social and clinical psychology should welcome Dr Healy’s new book “The Individual Delinquent.” Dr Healy has devoted his energies for the last five years to making a laboratory story of the science of criminalistics, and this volume represents the results of his painstaking labors. In the spirit of scientific research he has made an intensive and individual study of each juvenile offender who has come to him through the Chicago Juvenile Court. His work has been influenced by neither prejudice nor theory. To those who have tried to group and to classify clinic cases his treatment of the delinquent brings a sense of relief, for he clearly shows that a hard and fast classification of delinquents is neither desirable nor possible. The delinquent is not a type. He may represent one of many types with one or more eccentricities of make-up which render him anti-social in certain respects. The same combination of factors would probably never be duplicated. Where Dr Healy has found similar phenomena of behavior he has grouped together the individuals possessing them; but the individual has been uppermost, not a scheme of classification. His great plea is for the individual treatment of exceptional boys and girls. He puts this most emphatically before the lawyers and the judges. He advocates fair judgment based upon common sense, and a scientific treatment of the offender from the point of view of the delinquent and his reaction upon society, rather than from the character of the offence.
The volume consists of Book I and Book II. Book I gives a detailed account of the method of procedure followed in making the “psychogram,” the crosssection of the adolescent offender, from the medical, social, and psychological viewpoints, in order to determine what the author calls “the essential fact”? that is, the personality of the examinee. From this psychogram are formulated the diagnosis, or analysis of the present situation, and the prognosis, or suggestion for treatment. Dr Healy feels that the psychological viewpoint is essential, as from the “phenomena of mental life paths will be discovered to amendment of the moral situation.” He found “this method of approach afforded the quickest and clearest understanding, the surest interpretation and by far the greatest promise of success.” He holds that the relationship between conduct and mental life can best be perceived “in studying the immediate causation of social misdoing” and that the mental life stands to conduct as antecedent to consequent. Chapter V contains a wealth of information as to details of equipment, and as to the procedure to be followed in conducting a psychological clinic which should aim “to ascertain from the actualities of life the basic factors of disordered social conduct.” He emphasizes the need of professional training in medicine, in normal psychology, in actual experience in studying abnormal mental types, and in practical differential psychology as the personal equipment of the examiner. He puts the requirements high, but not too high when one considers the seriousness of the task placed before a clinical psychologist. The pages relating to records and to the schedule of data and their treatment are especially helpful.
Chapter VI deals with psychological methods of analyzing mental traits by means of mental tests, laying stress upon the significance of the emotional life frequently not discovered by the usual tests, but more often brought to light in the developmental and family history. His “plan of psychological inquiry” covers the methods of determining the subject’s general and special abilities, both as independent of his formal education and as related to it, the presence of psychoses, of preponderating mental interests, or of any peculiar characteristics of emotional or moral life. No discussion of individual tests can be given here, but Dr Healy’s criticism of the Binet Tests as of limited value because of their failure to reveal special capabilities or aberrational tendencies, or to give a clue to the economic or social environment is especially timely. They “are of the utmost practical usefulness for children under ten years and for defectives who range as low as ten.” “This kind of psychogram,” he says, “tells little about the many other conditions of mental structure and function which should be known.” They have not been found applicable to a cosmopolitan population, they do not satisfactorily measure general ability apart from schooling, they over-estimate language ability, and underestimate performance ability. Dr Healy’s own tests are fully described and well illustrated.
Book II on “Cases, Types, Causative Factors” gives a general survey of the causative factors of delinquency. Dr Healy says, “We present our concrete data for the use of judges, officials of probation, parole or pardon departments, for institution officers, professional people, and all others who should have close scientific understanding of what makes for criminalistic proclivities.” He cites many cases to illustrate his two aims (1) the protection of society, and (2) the improvement of the criminal. In the various chapters of this part he classifies the factors relating to delinquency into such groups as antenatal, natal, postnatal, physical, mental, and social, with remarkable clearness. He defines delinquency as “the product of a personal reaction to a given environment”. He looks upon uncongeniality in the home, upon the mental imagery produced by pictures, upon craving for adventure, evil association, sexual indulgence, mental conflict and repression as dynamic in mental life and as strong factors in forming a criminalistic mental habit.
In the chapters on “Mental Defects” he stands for the recognition of (a) a group of feebleminded with special abilities either socially or nonsocially insignificant, (b) a group not feebleminded but with defects in special mental abilities and (c) a group characterized by mental dulness from physical conditions. He has adopted Dr Adolf Meyer’s term, “psychic constitutional inferiority” for a group “recognized by chronic abnormal social and mental reaction to the ordinary conditions of life, on the part of one who cannot be classified in any of the groups of the insanities, neuroses, or of the mental defectives.”
To psychologists, jurists, and social workers, the discussion of the so-called “moral imbecile” is especially interesting. The author asserts that although he has searched industriously, he has not yet found a single case in which the basic trouble was not mental deficiency or some form of aberration, or in which the individual was not a victim of environmental conditions, or of some sort of mental conflict, and therefore assignable to some other definite class. Throughout both books he urges the public and the courts to consider the mental status in determining the disposition and treatment of offenders even while making the individual case serve as a warning. He holds that defective self-control is no excuse for legal freedom. He heartily endorses probation, parole, and suspension of fine or sentence, and the development of constructive measures, to prevent repetition of the act by upbuilding the powers of inhibition. Eleanor Larrabee Lattimore.
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