Aspects of Adolescence: Delinquency, Neurosis and Creativity
| Published date | 01 June 1984 |
| Date | 01 June 1984 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058403100205 |
| Author | Jean Scarlett |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
54
Aspects
of
Adolescence:
Delinquency,
Neurosis
and
Creativity
Jean
Scarlett
Principal
Psychotherapist,
Surrey
Health
Authority
A
consideration
of
anti-social
and
creative
tendencies
in
adolescents,
based
on
the
author’s
work
in
a
Borstal
Recall
Centre,
an
interpretative
study
of
the
life
and
literature
of
Emily
Brontë,
and
the
ideas
of
D.
W.
Winnicott.
Deprivation
and
Delinquency
’At
the
root
of
the
anti-social
tendency
there
is
always
a
deprivation,’
says
Winnicott.
My
own
experience
has
led
me
to
believe
that
this
is
true
I
worked
for
eight
years
m
Holloway
Pnson
durmg
which
time
I
was
particularly
concerned
with
a
wing
of
young
girls
on
Borstal
recall.
We
tried
to
run
this
wing
as
like
a
therapeutic
community
as
was
possible
in
a
prison,
training
volunteer
prison
officers
to
take
small
counselling
groups
and
holding
community
meetings
for
all
staff
and
girls
s
several
times
a
week
In
the
pathetic
histories
which
these
young
delinquents
told
us,
disruptions
m
the
home
figured
only
too
frequently
These
tended
to
be
more
overt
than
in
the
case
of
neurotics
and
varied
from
depnvation
in
relation
to
the
mother
or
separation,
either
mental
or
physical,
from
her,
often
resulting
in
moves
for
the
child
from
one
relative
or
institution
to
another,
to
more
obviously
drastic
catastrophes
caused
by
drmk,
drug
addiction
or
incest
in
the
home.
As
with
other
delinquents
and
some
other
adolescents,
the
basic
drives
of these
girls
seemed
very
near
the
surface,
they
did
not
seem
to
have
matured
to
the
point
where
character
was
formed
and
conscience
internalised.
Their
treatment
demanded
not,
as
with
people
suffering
from
neurosis,
the
interpretation
of
conflict,
conscious
or
unconscious,
but,
primarily,
the
facilitation
of development
and
this
could
only
be
done
through
fostering
relationships
Our
ambitious
aim
was
to
try
to
influence
those
in
daily
contact
with
them,
that
is
the
prison
officers,
to
take
over
the
maternal
role
and
go
some
way
towards
making
good
the
deficiencies
which
had
ongmated
in
the
family
Persecution
and
Destruction
Due
to
this
failure
of the
emotional
environment
in
infancy,
the
destructive
tendencies
which
may
be
common
to
all
infants
are
not
resolved
in
the
normal
manner.
Such
impulses
are
projected
on
to
the
environment
which
is
seen
as
persecuting
Alternatively,
the
persecution
can
be
introjected
and
the
delinquent
sees
him
or
herself
as
full
of
badness.
Delinquents
frequently
seem
to
have
got
stuck
at
this
point,
whereas
normal
people
seem
to
have been
reassured
by
a
predominance
of
good
experiences,
In
addition,
the
delinquent
frequently
seems
to
have
so
little
faith
m
his
or
her
capacity
to
love
others
that
relationships
have
to
be
destroyed,
not
only
because
the
person
concerned
fears
rejection,
but
also
because
he
doubts
his
capacity
to
love
and
preserve
his
objects.
The
more
normal
person
does
not
feel
that
he
is
so
dangerous
to
those
he
loves
On
the
other
hand
Winnicott
thinks
that
those
demonstrating
the
anti-social
tendency
have
always
known
some
goodness
They
are
protesting
against
a
loss,
trying
to
get
the
world
to
acknowledge
a
debt,
or
restore
a
framework
that
got
broken
up
He
says:
‘At the
root of adolescence
m general
it
is
not possible
to
say
that
there
is
mherently
a
deprivation
and
yet
there
is
something
which
is
the
same,
but,
being
less
in
degree
and
diffused,
it just
avoids
overstraining
the
available
defences
So
that
m
the
group
that
the
adolescent
finds
to
identify
with,
or
m
the
aggregate
of
isolates
that
forms
into
a
group
in
relation
to
a
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