Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves
Their Characters and Home-Life
The following chapter is a small portion of a two-part paper published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1944 by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst and past supervisee of Melanie Klein. It ushered in his discovery of human attachment and foretells the enormous contributions of his subsequent career. Bowlby notes the affectionless nature of a carefully studied sample of juvenile thieves and here elaborates on the inhibition of love by rage, stimulated by parental neglect, and the consequent fantasies of badness that come to define internalized representations of self and others. This indifference, or dismissive pattern of attachment, eliminates “any risk of letting our hearts be broken again.”
(V) NOTES ON THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE AFFECTIONLESS CHARACTER
The foregoing statistical analysis has demonstrated that a prolonged separation of a child from his mother (or mother-figure) in the early years commonly leads to his becoming a persistent thief and an Affectionless Character. An understanding of the detailed psychopathology must await the analysis of a few typical cases. Nevertheless an outline of the probable pathology may be sketched.1
First we may note the parts played by libidinal and aggressive impulses, both of which will inevitably have been excessively stimulated by the frustration of separation. By stealing the child hopes for libidinal satisfaction, though in reality it proves ineffective, because the symbol of love has been mistaken for the real thing. From earliest days libidinal satisfaction is associated with obtaining possession of things. In infancy it is milk, in later years toys and sweets; and even in adult life a drink, a box of chocolates, a cigarette or a good meal are the bearers of kindly feelings from one person to another. Food and other objects thus become symbols of affection. A child separated from his mother comes to crave both for her love and for its accompanying symbols and this craving, if unsatisfied, later presents itself as stealing. The fact that most of these children stole food or money to buy food and that these thefts were often from their mothers, was clearly no accident. The food they stole was no doubt felt to be the equivalent of love from the mother whom they had lost, though probably none was conscious of the fact.
The violence which these desires assume when untoward circumstances lead to their being thwarted is illustrated by several cases. Despite repeated and severe punishments these children persisted in pilfering from their mothers’ bags and boxes. Norman K. broke into his mother’s money box, whilst Nansi F. pried open a Salvation Army collecting box with a knife. The need to gain possession of all their mother’s good things, if necessary by attacking her, is evident.
These libidinal cravings commonly take an oral form, sometimes of a very primitive kind. Again and again one hears that milk is stolen. Such early oral desires were particularly noticeable in an adult thief of Schizoid or Affectionless Character whom I have treated: she had the habit of taking her morning tea from a baby’s bottle. These excessive libidinal cravings may, of course, be expressed in any of the typical forms, oral, anal, urethral or genital, and it will be surprising if investigation does not confirm the impression that a close association exists between chronic stealing and promiscuity, a topic which is discussed in the next section. Such an association is clearly to be expected if we are right in postulating a strong though distorted libidinal component in the make-up of persistent thieves.
Important though libidinal factors are in driving children to steal, the part played by aggression must not be forgotten, for stealing not only enriches oneself, but impoverishes and hurts others. Revenge is unquestionably a very powerful driving force towards stealing. If one has suffered great deprivation oneself, one will feel inclined to inflict equal suffering on someone else.*
Now the children whom we are discussing have suffered great deprivation and it is not to be wondered at that they are impelled to inflict similar suffering on others. Derrick O’C., whom I was able to see regularly, reluctantly admitted (after interpretation) that much of his stealing had been done out of revenge. He had been extremely jealous of his brother Johnny, four years younger, and consciously felt that Johnny’s presence had robbed him of much affection and many presents. The fact that he had been farmed out for most of his first three years must have added poignancy to Derrick’s vision of his mother lavishing affection on Johnny. At any rate he was jealous of Johnny and felt that he would have got more love and better presents if Johnny were not there. His stealing, therefore, was motivated partly by a desire to make up to himself and partly by a desire to revenge himself on his mother, who admitted herself that she favoured Johnny. He recalled that he had often deliberately stolen after his mother had shouted at him or punished him and that his motive in stealing the two bicycles had been partly to get his father fined in the Police Court. The story was that many other boys had bikes, and Derrick had asked his father to give him one. His father refused, so in revenge Derrick took the bikes, knowing he would get caught and expecting and hoping his father also would get into trouble.
Still there is nothing pathognomonic about excessive libidinal and aggressive impulses directed towards parents. They are found in one form or another in all cases of functional mental illness. What characterize these particular cases are (i) that they lack the usual inhibition of these impulses and (ii) that they are unable to make permanent personal relationships owing to their inability to feel or express love; in other words there is an extreme degree of the impaired capacity to make object-relationships which is present in some degree in every neurotic and unstable person. In these Affectionless Characters it amounts to a massive inhibition of object-love combined with excessive and relatively uninhibited libidinal and aggressive impulses. This combination is clearly no accident. On the contrary the lack of inhibition is the necessary result of the lack of a love-relationship, a result which is explained by a theory of the origin of the superego and the development of object-love which, though implicit in psychoanalytic literature, has not, so far as I know, been the subject of a detailed exposition.*
Observations on infants show that they become clearly aware of their mothers’ individuality during their first year of life. By the end of this year they not only recognize and value her as the person from whom love and all good things emanate, but have come to take pleasure in reciprocating her love. Object-love, a mixture of the selfish and the altruistic, is already developed to a considerable degree. Normally, through the processes of identification and introjection, there then comes to be formed in the child’s mind a pattern of feeling and behavior, the superego, which is designed to maintain this relationship with the object by inhibiting impulses inimical to it. The superego, although often experienced as a foreign body, an agent of the loved object, is in reality the expression both of the need for the object and of love for it, and this remains so despite its frequent use of aggressive measures to attain its ends. Without some measure of object-love the whole structure of the superego, whether it operates by violent inhibition or moderate control, could not exist, since both the purpose which it serves and the needs which it expresses would be non-existent.
Now it is precisely these affectionate relationships with loved objects which are lacking in the case of the Affectionless thieves; the lack of any properly developed superego, with its regulation of the libidinal and aggressive impulses, is the direct result. The problem thus resolves itself into elucidating the reasons for the absence of object-love. Several factors are almost certainly responsible and the difficulty is to know what weight each should be given, especially as it is extremely probable that their influence varies with different cases.
In the first place, especially in the younger children, lack of opportunity may well play a part in the failure of object-love to develop. The growth of object-love is normally rapid during the second six months of life and it is not unnatural to suppose that if there is no opportunity for its exercise it will fail to grow. Such a state of affairs exists when an infant or small child is in a hospital, since it is rare for nurses to remain long enough in a ward for tiny children to become attached to them. The likelihood of a simple process of this kind operating is strengthened by the familiar observation that dogs need to be in the hands of one person during the critical period of their training and that if they are not they grow up lacking attachment to a master and consequently wild and disobedient. Since experiment would be possible, it is perhaps not altogether fanciful to suggest that a study in the social development of dogs or monkeys might be of value in this connection.
A second fairly simple factor which almost certainly plays a part is the swamping of affection by rage. This was obviously important in those cases who at a rather later age were reft from homes where they were happy and then expected to settle down cheerfully with strangers. It is hardly unexpected that the reaction to such a situation is often one of intense hatred for the new mother-figure, a hatred which effectively inhibits any growth of love. It is not unlikely that such emotions may also be called up towards a mother who places her child in a hospital or foster-home. The child does not know the reason for this event, but may well interpret it as a particularly hateful act on the part of the mother. This hypothesis is supported by the well-established observation that in certain cases children so deserted refuse to have anything to do with their parents when they visit, treating them with active avoidance, unlike their treatment of strangers. Betty I. was an example; she refused to have anything to do with her mother when she visited her in her foster-home and continued to avoid her when at length she returned home. Love is impossible if hate is entrenched.
In the human mind, unlike the dog’s, such a mood of hatred tends to perpetuate itself through phantasy. To hate a person is to conjure up a picture of him as bad and evil and bent on enmity towards oneself. For a child to hate his mother is for him to picture her as not merely frustrating but filled with emotions of animosity and revenge. Phantasy, born of rage, thus distorts the picture of the real mother. A kindly mother who has to put her child in a hospital, a frustrating yet well-meaning mother and a really unkind mother can, by this process, alike come to be regarded as malicious and hostile figures. The dreadful nightmares of a horrifying dream-lady which beset Norman K. probably originated in this way. The child thus comes to be haunted by bad objects, with the familiar result that he comes to regard himself also as a bad object. Whether this is wholly through the process of introjection or whether primary self-reproach for having hateful feelings towards the loved object also plays a part is at present not clear, though I incline personally to the view that both factors operate. In any case the child’s picture of himself becomes as distorted as his picture of his mother. He comes to see himself as a bad, unloveworthy child and interprets circumstances accordingly.
One of the Affectionless thieves, Derrick O’C., showed this tendency very strikingly. Over a long period he came regularly to see me once a week. He proved unexpectedly co-operative and did much to unearth the causes of his own stealing, but he was always pathetically anxious to please and was obviously worried when he was unable to answer some query I might make. One day when he came his presence was overlooked in the hall and I was told he had not arrived. This was not surprising as he had slunk in so quietly with other patients and remained so quiet that the doorkeeper had simply not seen him. However, on going into the hall 45 minutes later I found him patiently waiting, and, since I had a little time to spare, arranged to see him. The analysis soon got on to his fear of people punishing him, and I asked him if he sometimes felt I might punish him. To this he replied that he thought his being kept waiting so long in the hall was my way of punishing him for not always answering my questions. Such a misinterpretation implies not only that the analyst is a bad and hostile person, but also that the patient is bad and worthy only of punishment.
Now such misconceptions regarding both the motives of others and of their own unloveworthiness, in each case the result of phantasy, are common to all neurotics. Normally, however, these misconceptions coexist with other, more realistic conceptions of the situation, with the result that object-relationships continue possible, though disturbed. The Affectionless thief on the other hand seems to be dominated by these phantasies; the real situation is obliterated. This, it would appear, is the result of the separation they have suffered being a prolonged one. Normally when such phantasies arise in children they are soon corrected to some degree by contact with the real mother, who, whatever her shortcomings, is never so bad as the bad mother which the child pictures to himself when he is in a rage. The mere presence of the real mother, therefore, almost irrespective of what she does, will go far to offset the phantasy figure and so will reassure the child as regards both her and himself. But where a child does not see his mother for many months there is no opportunity for this correction of phantasy by reality-testing to operate. Extravagant phantasies of the kind described then become so entrenched that, when the child returns to the real situation, he can see it in no terms but those of his phantasies. The progressive modification of phantasy by contact with reality is thus stultified and the child is doomed to see both himself and the world of people as reflections of his own angry and horrifying conceptions of them. And the result is that both he and they appear untrustworthy and unloveworthy.
The presence of such phantasies goes far to account for the suspicion, secrecy and guilt which characterize these children. For instance, Betty I. and Derrick O’C. were said never to ask for anything, which suggests that they expected to be given nothing and felt they deserved nothing. Moreover, several patients gave their spoils away to other children, again suggesting a feeling that they ought not to have anything.
Two principal causes of an inability to form and maintain loving relationships have been proposed, the failure of development of the capacity owing to absence of opportunity at a critical period and the inhibition of love by rage and the phantasies resulting from rage. There is one other factor which is probably also important, perhaps particularly so in the child who suffers separation at the age of two or three. This is the determination at all costs not to risk again the disappointment and the resulting rages and longings which wanting someone very much and not getting them involves. If we are indifferent to others or dislike them we disarm them of any power to hurt us. Now this indifference was absolutely characteristic of every one of these children, although in some cases it was little more than skin-deep. They neither showed affection nor appeared to care whether they got it. “Whatever we do,” we might imagine them saying, “do not let us care too much for anyone. At all costs let us avoid any risk of allowing our hearts to be broken again.” This, I think, is the explanation of much of their hard-boiledness and apparent indifference, traits which puzzle and irritate almost everyone who has to deal with them. It is a policy of self-protection against the slings and arrows of their own turbulent feelings.
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1in these brief notes there has been no occasion for a detailed discussion of the theories of Freud, Klein and other psycho-analysts and in consequence references are omitted. My debt to other analysts will however be obvious.
*Editor’s Note: This is, of course, an example of lex talionis, the law of talion or revenge, a primitive impulse that provides a psychobiological underpinning for retributive justice.
*Editor’s Note: See Arnold Modell (1968). Object Love and Reality. New York: International Universities Press.