A Cure for Delinquents: The Treatment of Maladjustment

orientated psychotherapist to Brebinghurst, an L.C.C. Residential School for maladjusted children in Peckham, London. In a foreword, the school's headmaster during most of this period points out that Brebinghurst was the first school in the country to have a psychiatric team consisting of psychiatrist, clinical psychotherapist and social worker, but apart from the introduction, this is the last we hear of the school's psychiatrist. Dr. Shields is a man of strong views. "Delinquency always includes maladjust-ment," he declares on page one and describes how in his, view the more disturbed children must regress to infantile states, and reach crises of violent or completely disorganised behaviour before cures are possible. Full analysis is essential to the cures he believes in, and he describes how unfortunately so many teachers and ancillary staff are unable to understand the importance of this. The book describes the importance of securing the cooperation of other staff in the psychotherapist's task, and there are many moving and descriptive case histories to support this need-At Brebinghurst "only about 50% of the boys receive psychotherapy proper whilst they are in residence (but) every child benefits from the general psychiatric orientation at the school. Once each member of the staff is able to accept from the psychiatric point of view" then all is able to proceed smoothly. "If the environment gives him no opportunity to turn in on himself and get in touch with his unconscious fantasies, he will be overtly delinquent or antisocial" (p. 44). "A school which can accept the analytic point of view is able to. .. cure boys who, had they been at another school, would have been considered incurable, sent on to an Approved School, and probably have become incurable psychopaths." (p. 44). Approved schools are several times mentioned as repositories for incurable psychopaths, and Dr. Shields points out how unfortunate it is that so many magistrates consider the protection of the public comes before treatment at Brebing' hurst and are capable of sending his patients to approved schools. Magistrates are not the only members of society to receive Dr. Shields' stric tures. Ratepayers are also unsympathetic (p. 108). Those teachers who are not prepared to accept analytic principles, and allow their children to "test out many times the capacity of the environment to withstand his aggressive and antisocial behaviour, at first in a quiet and minor key but with gradually increasing vigour rising to …