A Comparative Study of Developmental, Adjustment, and Personality Characteristics of Psychotic, Psychoneurotic, Delinquent, and Normally Adjusted Teen Aged Youths

Problems of Adolescent Adjustment

“…As a group, their emotional reaction to the father was negative, much more so than to the mother. Both delinquent boys and girls &dquo;rate their parents at the indifferent or rejecting end of the scale.&dquo; (37) Because the social, emotional, and academic adjustment of delinquent girls is only slightly below average, while that of delinquent boys is very poor, these same authors suggest that the maladjustment of the former &dquo;is primarily related not to personality difficulties within themselves, but to difhculties of adjustment within the family group and to their general environment ;&dquo; while the maladjustment of tho latter &dquo;seems to be related to their own individual deviations from established patterns or norms as much as to deviations within their environment.&dquo; (37) This difference becomes more understandable if we bear in mind that the delinquent girls represented in the study were mostly &dquo;sex delinquents.&dquo; As Frank (7) points out, the source of the difficulty in this case is frequently an inability to incorporate biological sex role successfully into the ego because of the father's hostile and deprecating attitude towards the female sex. These female sex delinquents then, contrary to the general impression, frequently have little sex interest or drive and merely utilize their position as passive sex objects as a means of &dquo;exercising power over men,&dquo; and in this way obtaining &dquo;revenge for the years of humiliation they suffered as girls.&dquo; Hence, since, in the case of female sex delinquency, the source of maladjustment is more limited in scope, we might reasonably expect a lesser involvement of total personality structure than in the case of delinquent boys.…”

“…Obviously in all of these cases, the prophylactic task is to avoid the parental attitudes which lead to' these disastrous consequences. However, this is easier said than done, because in our society, &dquo;although a negative rejecting attitude on the part of parents is frowned upon ... there appears to be much more social acceptance of the doting, emotional, but domineering type of reaction.&dquo; (37) The American parent has been so over-impressed with the dangers of rejecting his children that he has veered to the opposite extreme. Some parents, in fact, conceive of their parental role as intended to insure the fact that their child suffers not the slightest frustration, since this, it is argued, makes for emotional insecurity.…”

“…&dquo;Psychotic (schizophrenic) patients rate their mothers as definitely below average in emotional stability and definitely over-solicitous and over-protective. They describe themselves on the average as dependent and with very strong emotional relationships (to) their mothers&dquo; (37). The psychotic youths also gave evidence of poor disciplinary, social, and emotional adjustment in childhood.…”

“…The psychotic youths also gave evidence of poor disciplinary, social, and emotional adjustment in childhood. &dquo;Personality type (during childhood) was also of diagnostic significance&dquo; in schizophrenic adolescents ... social introversion (being) their strongest trait.&dquo; (37) In relation to this problem, Blanchard (17) concludes that &dquo;with all the emphasis that has been placed upon adolescent instability and the personality conflicts of adolescence, it might be expected that psychosis or delinquency would often have its onset at this period of life. Statistical studies do not confirm this expectation; available statistics seem to indicate that mental disease (psychosis) usually comes into the open during adult life after adolescence, while delinquency ordinarily begins before adolescence during the childhood years.&dquo; Blanchard however qualifies this statement somewhat, by saying that &dquo;a large proportion of the mental illness having its onset in adult years is actually a delayed outcome for childhood and adolescent experience&dquo; (17).…”

Empathetic Relationships in Adolescents and Their Relevance To Prognosis in Psychiatric Breakdown

“…(Bowlby 1951) (Goldfarb 1943) (Rutter 1972). Wittman and Huffman (1945) made a comparative study of development adjustment and personality characteristics of psychotic, psychoneurotic, delinquent and normally adjusted teenage youths. The influence of broken homes was stressed as contributing to juvenile delinquency; more than 80% of the adolescents in the control group had both parents, whereas over 40% of the delinquent group were from broken homes.…”