Negligent criminology: Alfred Adler’s influence on Bernard, Sheldon, and Eleanor Glueck
| Author | Phillip Shon,Erik Mansager |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819874455 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819874455
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819874455
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Negligent criminology: Alfred
Adler’s influence on Bernard,
Sheldon, and Eleanor Glueck
Phillip Shon
Ontario Tech University, Canada
Erik Mansager
Alfred Adler Institute of Northwestern Washington, USA
Abstract
We suggest that Bernard, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck routinely applied Alfred Adler’s general
psychological concepts to specific instances of criminological theory without proper attribution.
We offer several levels of support: (1) we contrast the Freudian terminology within Bernard
Glueck’s early writings and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck’s influential book Unraveling Juvenile
Delinquency (1950) with the Adlerian constructs of their respective criminological works; (2) we
describe the enduring similarity between life-course theory of crime and Adler’s original theory;
and (3) we speculate as to how this apparent but non-attributed Adlerian influence occurred.
Overall, the article exposes a circumstantial evidence of neglect in the criminology literature:
Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck’s silence on Adler’s contribution and their own ostracization by
mainstream criminology. We conclude that acknowledgment of the Gluecks’ contribution and
their debt to Adler could continue to reinvigorate criminology today.
Keywords
Alfred Adler, Bernard Glueck, classical Adlerian psychology, Individual Psychology, life-course
criminology, psychological theory of crime
Ever since John Laub discovered the overlooked data for Unraveling Juvenile
Delinquency (Glueck and Glueck, 1950) in the basement of the Harvard Law School, the
trajectory of criminology as a discipline has been shaped by a flurry of significant events.
Corresponding author:
Phillip C. Shon, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Ontario Tech University, 55 Bond St. East,
Oshawa, Ontario L1G 1AB, Canada.
Email: phillip.shon@uoit.ca
874455EUC0010.1177/1477370819874455European Journal of CriminologyShon and Mansager
research-article2019
Article
2021, Vol. 18(5) 660–677
Laub’s discovery occasioned the reanalysis of the data using advanced statistical tech-
niques, which led to the follow-up longitudinal study of the original delinquents. The
reexamination of the data resulted in the publication of seminal works such as Crime in
the Making (Sampson and Laub, 1993), Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives (Laub and
Sampson, 2003) and other significant works in criminology (for example, Farrington,
2003; Nagin et al., 1995).
Laub and Sampson (1991) are not alone in contending that the intellectual predeces-
sor to current criminological theory can be traced to the works of the husband–wife team,
Sheldon (1896–1980) and Eleanor (1898–1972, née Touroff) Glueck. The reanalysis of
the Gluecks’ data shaped the emergence in the 1990s of the life-course theory of crime,
which has become the default paradigm in North American criminology (Cullen, 2011).
Despite the promising direction offered by Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency, the
Gluecks never attained the professional acknowledgment and standing of Sheldon
Glueck’s older brother, Bernard Glueck, Sr. (1884–1972). As a forensic psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst who worked at New York’s Sing Prison, Bernard Glueck had a deep inter-
est in psychopathy and contributed to the professional criminology literature (for exam-
ple, Glueck, 1918, 1921, 1925, 1939, 1940, 1947 and 1954). He meticulously sought to
illuminate both psychopathy and crime by reference to Freudian theory (see Alexander,
et al., 1935a, 1935b) and his influence in the early history of criminology is readily
acknowledged (Rafter, 1997b). Not so for his younger brother, Sheldon, and his favored
student, Eleanor.
Bernard’s introduction of the two resulted in a lifelong marriage and a fruitful profes-
sional career, but within their early lifetimes found them excluded from the ranks of
academia. This article unravels their own participation – and possible collusion with
Bernard Glueck – in a ‘negligent criminology’ that failed to properly credit Adler as the
inspiration of their vibrant formulations and respective theorizing.
In the following, our broad focus is incrementally narrowed to the specifics of Adler’s
influence. We start with the extensive differences between the predominant psychologi-
cal theory applied to criminology at its inception, that of Sigmund Freud, and contrast the
alternative theory of Alfred Adler. Then we turn successively to life-course theory, the
specific approach Sheldon and Eleonor Glueck brought to Unraveling Juvenile
Delinquency (UJD), and then concentrate directly on their ‘under the roof’ metaphor –
showing at each level the striking similarity with Adler’s thinking. To conclude these
extended discussions, we offer a brief summary of how the infusion of classical Adlerian
concepts into contemporary criminology might have occurred and what its implications
might include.
Freudian terminology, Adlerian constructs
The early application of the psychoanalytic model to the human sciences was largely due
to the innovations of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In the late 19th century the physio-
logical and philosophical psychologies (for example, Theodor Fechner, 1801–1887),
while helping quantify psychological perceptions, had little applicability to the needs of
suffering individuals (Wexberg, 1929). This ‘old psychology’ was made practically
obsolete when the psychoanalytic approach was developed in the first decade of the 20th
661
Shon and Mansager
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