ABSTRACT
Troubled youth inevitably develop elaborate systems for displacing responsibility for their problems onto some other person or circumstance. When we ask a youth why he got into trouble he will say his parents were messed up, or he had the wrong friends, or the police were out to get him, or the teachers hated him, or his luck turned bad. Projecting, denying, rationalizing, and avoiding, he becomes expert at escaping responsibility. But only as a person feels accountable for his actions is he able to learn from his experiences and resolve his problems.
