age of some permanent mental defect with which these moral imperfections must be 'coupled.' In other words, the moral imbecile, besides being vicious and criminal, must also be feeble-minded in the sense contemplated by the previous clause.

This seems to be the view even of those medical writers who do not accept the current psychology of character. Dr Tredgold, for example, writes1: "I quite agree with Dr Maier...that an individual may be intellectually normal and yet devoid of moral sense" (his italics); but considers (and rightly I think) that, though in theory this distinction may be made, in actual practice a slight intellectual impairment is usually present, and concludes that "persistent misconduct of the primary form is merely a special variety of primary mental deficiency."

Similarly Lapage2 states that "moral defectives...are often mentally (i.e. intellectually) very little below the average child. They are nevertheless feeble-minded."

If then so-called moral deficiency is simply a special variety of mental deficiency, the addition of a special clause giving the moral imbecile a separate definition and a separate name seems hardly necessary. The clause as it stands seems extremely confusing. Confronted with a suspected case of moral imbecility the plain man, whether doctor, magistrate or teacher, ignoring the subtle issues raised, is apt to infer that he must prove, first, a defect in intelligence probably amounting to actual imbecility, and then demonstrate by actual punishment that such punishment is of little or no use.

It is then the essence of my contention that mental deficiency or feeble-mindedness is not to be limited simply to deficiency in intelligence. Although morality is not inborn, it rests upon an inborn basis. The foundations of character, we are now generally taught, consist in certain inherited instincts and emotions. These inherited instincts and emotions vary considerably in their strength from person to person and from child to child. In many instances it can be shown that the strength of these inherited tendencies is itself hereditary; hence it seems logical to recognise the existence of a congenital basis disposing the child to immoral habits, though these habits are not themselves inborn. Elsewhere3 I have tried to show that nearly all the activities that constitute crime and naughtiness in the young are simply the outcome of natural instincts, inherited by all mankind in common with the higher mammals. Stealing, destruc

1 Mental Deficiency, p. 32.

2 Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age, p. 76.

"The Causes and Treatment of Juvenile Delinquency," Psyche, II. iv. 341–344.

tiveness, personal violence, sexual misbehaviour, wandering and running away, these are simply manifestations of the half-dozen instincts described by writers like James, McDougall and Shand-manifestations, but little modified by experience, of such recognised impulses as the instinct of acquisitiveness, the instinct of sex, the instinct of anger or destruction, the migratory instinct, and the instinct of flight. Where simple defect. of intelligence is accompanied by vicious or criminal propensities, these propensities are merely the expression, not of a perverse or criminal disposition, or of an absence of moral sense, but of universal human instincts which the defective intelligence is too weak to control.

Where there is a lack of balance between instinct or emotion, on the one hand, and intelligence and that moral control which results from the intellectual organisation of these tendencies, upon the other, there a condition of 'instability' ensues. An extreme degree of emotional instability, due to inborn factors, I term 'temperamental deficiency.'

I would propose, therefore, to recognise, besides what I have termed intellectual deficiency, and in place of moral imbecility, a second form of deficiency, which I shall call temperamental deficiency. The difficulty now is to define the temperamental defective so that a diagnosis can be made upon a just, equitable, and uniform criterion.

(1) To begin with, just as I believe there is a central factor underlying all intellectual capacities, so I believe it can be shown that there is a central emotional factor underlying all emotional and instinctive tendencies. This general emotional factor I may speak of loosely as temperament. First of all, therefore, I should deem no child to be temperamentally defective unless the defect affected, not one instinct or emotion only, but all, or at least several, of his instincts and emotions in a greater or a less degree. Thus the over-sexed child, the bad-tempered child, or the acquisitive child, in whom some single instinct was so strong that he was led into sexual immorality, violence, or theft, according to that instinct's nature, I should not term temperamentally defective, unless other emotions showed a similar excessive strength.

Here, then, I think I am in perfect accordance with Dr East and opposed to the views of many social workers. Dr East observes that the vicious impulses of the so-called moral imbecile, unlike those of the mere professional criminal, are "frequently not restricted to one class of offence"; and, taking the prostitute as the common illustration cited in such discussions, he maintains that an habitual and even an instinctive tendency to sex-delinquency is of itself insufficient to constitute a case of mental defect.

First, then, the emotional abnormality must be more or less general, not limited to single instinctive impulse.

(2) Secondly, the temperamental defect must be innate. Here there are three acquired conditions, which may at first sight suggest temperamental deficiency, but which I should consider as separate and distinct.

(i) Adolescent Instability. About the period of puberty general emotionality is apt to be much increased. And it so happens that this very period is the time when a large proportion of juvenile delinquents are brought for examination, and many criminal careers are commenced. It therefore becomes extremely important to distinguish the child who is simply unstable for the time being from the child who has shown. excessive emotionality from birth or from an early age, and who is likely to show such excessive emotionality permanently, after the crisis of adolescence is past. In other cases improvable instability (accompanied by delinquency) may follow encephalitis.

(ii) Neurosis. Many delinquents are also neurotic-in my own cases, as many as 7 per cent. In a few instances, the disturbance is so severe as to resemble an incipient or borderline case of insanity: these latter cases I should call psychopathic rather than neurotic; but, in juvenile cases before puberty, the distinction is difficult. At all events, neurosis is then far commoner than insanity; and, since it may have existed from an age comparatively early, is far more likely to cause confusion in a diagnosis of temperamental. deficiency. A neurosis I regard as in itself an acquired condition, although it may be and usually is built up upon an inborn basis or neuropathic taint; and in some instances the inborn basis may be so extreme as to constitute a temperamental deficiency. In some cases the neurosis has only an indirect connection with the crime; in other cases it is more direct. Many children are sent to me who have been already labelled by a medical man as suffering from 'kleptomania.' Numerous similar ‘-manias'-nymphomania, dromania, pyromania—are recognised; and such cases are often described in text-books under the heading of moral imbecility. Sometimes almost the sole basis of the socalled '-mania' is simply an unusually intense instinct; these cases of 'instinctive criminality' I have already discussed. But where the suffix '-mania' has any justification at all, it implies a morbid impulsion to commit the act described, without any obvious motive, and without any obvious gain or pleasure resulting. Such impulses, where they can be genuinely established, are simply forms of a compulsion-neurosis; and the victims of them should no more be designated temperamentally defective than any other neurotic patient. Dr East, I gather, would

class them under the heading of 'impulsive insanity'; and deal with the sufferers as insane. Yet it is now well recognised that such obsessive impulses are often easily curable, being due simply to conflicts of the type Dr East has enumerated-"the knowledge or suspicion of the person that he is illegitimate, or that in some way the relations of his parents are unlike those belonging to others" (for example, I suppose, the fantasy that one of the parents is a step-parent, a foster-parent, or sexually immoral), and again, "some sexual, occupational, or environmental conflict." A few sympathetic interviews with the child, a few suggestions to his parents or teachers, temporary removal from the scene of conflict (even without a thorough psycho-analysis), may be sufficient, at any rate in a young person, to remove the neurosis.

Besides, however, a definite compulsion-neurosis, other forms of neurosis (or psycho-neurosis) are sometimes present in delinquents— conversion-hysteria, anxiety-hysteria, anxiety-neurosis, neurasthenia, and so forth. It may seem that these and the graver psychopathic conditions sometimes found at a later age-constitute the very cases which should be dealt with, not by punishment, but by some form of institutional treatment. But, again, since the condition is so often curable, and is precipitated primarily by accidental shock or environmental stress, it is to my mind important not to certify the patient as temperamentally defective, unless the neurosis is combined with definite insanity or else is a mere outgrowth of temperamental deficiency in the sense in which I am defining the term. The available modes of dealing with the neurotic criminal are to my mind unsatisfactory in the extreme.

(iii) Repression. Without the presence of definite neurotic symptoms, much delinquency is the outcome of what are now popularly termed 'repressed complexes.' Here again the mental and emotional state of the child may seem 'defective' in the superficial sense of the popular writer; and, even to the expert, an accurate diagnosis may be a matter of extreme difficulty without a case-history so elaborate as to amount to so-called psycho-analysing. But once more I consider that these cases are not to be regarded as temperamentally defective, unless the 'complex' is due, less to emotional disturbances originating outside the child's mind, than to the abnormal strength of conflicting instincts. Dr East emphasises the existence of this group, and agrees that it is to be distinguished from moral imbecility; but does not, I think, tell us how the prison authorities deal with such cases.

(3) Having successively ruled out the possibility of adolescent instability, of definite neurosis, and of repressed complexes without neurotic

symptoms, it still remains to determine whether the child's inborn emotional instability is so severe that he can be legitimately considered temperamentally defective.

Most juvenile delinquents-more than one-third of my own casesare emotionally unstable; but not all emotional instability in my view is to be termed deficiency. Otherwise we might also find ourselves bound logically to certify an enormous proportion of the law-abiding population. No definition to my mind is acceptable which would certify as temperamentally defective a second and a larger percentage than is already certifiable as intellectually defective.

I would propose, therefore, the following criterion. A temperamental defective is one who, without being defective also in intelligence, exhibits, permanently, and from birth or from an early age, less emotional control than would be exhibited by an average child of half his chronological age; or, in the case of an adult, of the age of seven or less. In such cases, I am convinced, it may be genuinely said that there indubitably exists "a mental defectiveness so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control, for their own protection or for the protection of others."

Where intellectual dulness, too slight of itself to constitute intellectual deficiency, coexists with emotional instability, too slight of itself to constitute deficiency in temperament, I should incline to take both aspects into account; and would still class the double sufferer as mentally deficient if the double retardation added together amounted to the degree defined. But these quantitative criteria are only rough guides. They can have even less significance in the case of temperament than in the case of intelligence.

We have no tests of general emotionality which are trustworthy and of general application. Tests certainly exist the Pressey tests, the Downey tests, and the psycho-galvanic reaction-and further research seems urgently needed in this direction. For the time being, however, the examiner must trust to his own personal observations and to the detailed histories supplied to him by careful and conscientious observers. He should acquaint himself with the normal emotional reactions of children of different ages; and he can thus keep at the back of his mind a rough standard of emotional development which may act as a guiding criterion.

I would propose, then, that the conception of temperamental deficiency be substituted for the conception of moral imbecility. The new phrase is not altogether satisfactory, since the trouble usually arises from an excess