CLINICAL TREATMENT OF MALE DELINQUENTS: A CASE STUDY IN EFFORT AND RESULT.

A small part of the juvenile delinquent population has been treated clinically since the establishment of the multi-disciplinary approach to children's behavior problems at Chicago, Illinois, in 1909. The special working relationship between psychiatry and criminology effected at that time soon was duplicated in courts and clinics in many cities. Ultimate goals of these courts and clinics were defined as the prevention of crime by appropriate treatment of juvenile delinquents. This paper reports on an evaluative study of one such court-affiliated clinic, the Wayne County Clinic for Child Study, in Detroit, Michigan. It is not pertinent here to recount the various treatment methods utilized during the past 40 years. Viewpoints relative to the etiology of delinquent behavior dictated therapeutic trends. Etiological theories of psychiatrists generally emphasized that delinquent behavior is a symptom with psychological roots. For example, in psychoanalytic theory, the most dominant position found in many clinics, delinquency is viewed as the acting out of an unconscious mental conflict formed by the impact of certain actions and events occurring within the family upon the biological strivings for libidinal satisfactions.