Preliminary to the Psychotherapy of Criminals

mon enough knowledge, certainly among those who are dealing with prisoners, but which have been neglected, perhaps because of it. My attempt to resurrect them, to give emphatic meaning to what is of common knowledge, will be justified if it will help us to develop a new attitude toward the problem. It must be admitted that the mass approach to the understanding of the problem of crime has so far failed to contribute in any significant way to its solution. The individual psychogenetic approach appears now to offer the most promise. But research into psychogenetics of crime is so intimately bound up with the problem of psychotherapy of criminals that without a hopeful psychotherapy, effective research is hardly possible. We will understand the criminal and help to solve the problem of crime only to the extent that we are willing to understand-and I should say also help--the criminal. But no one, least of all the criminal, would ordinarily want to undergo a minute psychic dissection of the personality unless he can see a specific personal reason for it; unless he has a goal, is given a hope, or promised relief, from painful symptoms he wishes to get rid of. There must thus be, first of all, an appreciation on the part of the individual that he is sick; there must further be a willingness on his part to undergo the treatment, and conditions must also be provided that will make the treatment of value

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