Delinquent Adolescent Girls: A Study of the Motivations Behind the Acts of 14 Girls Adjudicated Delinquent by Girls' Term Court, New York City, and Committed to Villa Loretto 1960–1961
Abstract
Background and Timeliness of the Study. With the advent of Freud and other writers of the psychoanalytic school, the whole focus on the question of human motivation underwent a radical change. Man’s behavior was no longer believed to be under the control of his will but was understood to be dominated by a psychic powerhouse known as his unconscious, Both his laudable as well as his base actions proceeded from drives rooted in the "id". A growing dissatisfaction with psychoanalytic thought because of its failure to provide therapeutic as well as theoretic answers has led to a re-examination of some of its basic tenets. Both the neo-Freudians and even members of the more orthodox school have come to assign to the ego a more prominent and more self-determining role in the psyche. Along with this greater emphasis on ego functions has come a reconsideration of the role of conscious motivation in human behavior. Through the first half of this century to the present, the theories of Freud and his followers have offered valuable insights into the unconscious dynamisms that have motivated the anti-social behavior of the adolescent delinquent. Despite the tremendous contribution which analytic findings have made toward the understanding of the young offender, much in the area of motivation remains to be clarified.
Subject Area
Social research|Social psychology|Social work
Recommended Citation
Ziegler, Sr. Mary of St. Christopher, "Delinquent Adolescent Girls: A Study of the Motivations Behind the Acts of 14 Girls Adjudicated Delinquent by Girls' Term Court, New York City, and Committed to Villa Loretto 1960–1961" (1962). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30670820.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30670820
