ABSTRACT
IF criminality is to be regarded as the consequence of some failure of social training, then there must always be two groups of variables to be taken into account; those relating to the kind of training applied, and those which determine the responsiveness of the individual to socialization. For this reason it is particularly unfortunate that the separate development of the criminal sciences has led to the tacit acceptance of a distinction between 'social' and 'psychological' (or 'psychiatric') criminality, not simply as an heuristic device, but as a classification to be applied to concrete cases. One can, of course, distinguish theoretically between criminality which is the consequence of a constitutional inability to respond to any kind of social training, however competent-the type-case of psychopathy-and that which would result if a normal individual were to receive no training at all, or if he were to be subjected to an upbringing so abnormal that it failed to acquaint him with the values of his social group. But this is a highly artificial distinction, and certainly does not correspond to an empirical dichotomy; on the contrary, we must expect that the great majority of criminals will fall somewhere between these two extreme types.
