ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows that clinical material observed over a space of twenty years has led him to believe that anti-social illness is more an illness of normal children disturbed by environment whereas manic-depressive illness is more an internal illness of children that is unrelated aetiologically to gross environmental events. A normal child, in comparison, has really had the experience of an infant’s mother, and he is capable of that much contentment. He believes in contentment, having experienced it, and tries to recapture it in his life. Psychoanalysis of delinquents is a highly dangerous job, and if delinquents are one day to be cured by psychoanalysis this will be done because of the psychoanalysis of normals and of manic-depressives, and also because of the study of the external aetiological factors found through case histories.
