Juvenile Delinquency; a 1960 Perspective

Abstract

Approaches to an understanding of juvenile delinquency have been hampered by attempts to attribute it to a single cause, continued use of outmoded classifications and terms, the individual jargons of the various schools of thought in psychiatry and ancillary fields, and diagnostic generalizations based solely on symptoms. A multidisciplinary approach is becoming more and more essential to productive progress in this area. Prevention is our chief hope in eradication of the problem. We must depend on a slow kind of “immunization” that can be achieved only through attainment of maturity by a world still too full of greed, envy and hostility. The psychiatrist alone is helpless in trying to achieve this goal.