Abstract
Juvenile delinquency has garnered the attention of social scientists for well over half a century. Unlike most other forms of child psychopathology, this attention has not come exclusively nor even in majority from the mainstream of psychological inquiry. Instead, delinquency has been viewed primarily as a “social problem” of interest to sociologists or as an adolescent transition period evoking psychoanalytic interpretations. This emphasis is reflected in the accumulated delinquency literature. Theoretical formulations on delinquency have generally been either of a sociological (cf. Elliott, Ageton, & Canter, 1979) or a psychoanalytic (cf. review by Gold & Petronio, 1980) perspective. Major treatment studies have been guided by social work strategies (Powers & Witmer, 1951) or psychoanalytic principles (Redl & Wineman, 1951). In addition, the majority of etiological studies of delinquency have been large-scale sociological investigations (McCord & McCord, 1959; Nye, 1958; Wadsworth, 1979; West & Farrington, 1973, 1977; Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972). While these approaches have added immensely to our knowledge of delinquent behavior, they have generally pictured delinquency as being the product of global social and economic conditions or as demonstrating transitory adjustment difficulties during adolescence. This has left juvenile delinquency in a somewhat awkward position of straddling the fence between sociological and psychological disciplines. In turn, this places a discussion of the psychopathology of delinquency in a similar position. It is the goal of this chapter to recognize the sociological heritage of delinquency but to gently coax delinquency off the fence into the investigative domain of current behavioral psychology.
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Moore, D.R., Arthur, J.L. (1983). Juvenile Delinquency. In: Ollendick, T.H., Hersen, M. (eds) Handbook of Child Psychopathology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7136-0_14
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