Rebel Without a Cause by Robert M. Lindner Read Free Book Online Page B

in order to obtain some kind of favorable treatment. In all cases, however, results were unsatisfactory.
    Harold attended public school from the first to the fourth grades in the city to which the family moved soon after his birth. Records from these years cannot be located, but his mother reports regular attendance and satisfactory performance. The fourth to the seventh grades were spent at a parochial school. The nuns who were his teachers have stated that he was a fair student and conducted himself passably well. He left parochial school to become a pupil in a special class for students with defective vision. At fifteen he graduated to High School, which he quit after one year. Officials and High School instructors considered his conduct fair but regretted that he did not produce to the level of his capabilities. At sixteen he renounced all scholastic pursuits and from that time forward worked fitfully on a relative’s farm.
    Harold’s recorded criminal history began at the age of twelve when in the company of other small boys he broke into a grocery store and made off with almost seventy-five dollars worth of candy and tobacco. He was apprehended and sent to a juvenile institution for examination by specialists; but while awaiting his turn he escaped custody byleaping through a window. Again apprehended, he was placed on two year’s probation. At thirteen he was arrested for a trespassing offense and the Juvenile Court extended the probationary period.
    After a two year respite Harold once more came into conflict with the law when he stole a sizable sum from a storekeeper. Probation was renewed. One month later, having made off with money from his mother’s purse, he purchased a rifle and with it attempted to rob a couple in an automobile on a deserted city street. Tricked by his clever victim, he was held for the police who hailed him into Juvenile Court, where he was again probated for five years. Minor charges for trespassing, breaking and entering and vandalism were lodged during the following year. On one occasion he received a short sentence to a correctional institution; on another, a light jail term. Several similar charges and warrants were pending when he was arrested for the offense for which he is now serving. The details of this offense cannot, unfortunately, be revealed here, but it was a crime serious enough to carry a heavy penalty.
    Many psychologists and psychiatrists have interviewed, examined and tested Harold. While they disagree on the causative factors in his case, all are in accord on the diagnosis of psychopathic personality complicated by social difficulties arising from the condition of the boy’s eyes. One psychiatrist stressed the avoidance by other children which Harold probably experienced, stating that they undoubtedly considered him a freak and this, as a consequence, forced his mother’s indulgence. Another specialist reported a need for productive occupation, and asociality and egocentricity as the leading factors in the clinical picture. Still another stated that Harold evinced pronounced feelings of inferiority in respect of his place in the family group, adding that he found the boy to be cowardly, unreliable and a schemer. This specialist also reported the presence of “subconscious jealousy of the father and a mother fixation.” The last examiner’s report closes with the statement: “… unless someone is able to psychoanalyze and reconstruct his personality from about three years of age on, the boy will continue on his career of crime and, because of his violent impulses, will become a more and more dangerous criminal.” A final expert found Harold honest in his statements and fairly intelligent; and, questioning him closely on his sex habits, obtained an admission of masturbation and sexual relations with girls in the neighborhood.
    On his arrival in the institution where the writer made his acquaintance, Harold showed a Mental Age of sixteen years and one month; an