Children Who Hate
Fritz Redl & David Wineman
Chapter III- The Ego That Cannot Perform (Part 1)

     It is a wonderful spectacle to watch a normal child at work or at play. And even a youngster who suffers from some minor neurotic disturbance or other but whose ego is basically in good shape takes most of the usual irritations of daily living in his stride. Take a ten year old, for instance, who just came home from a strenuous and not quite conflict-free day at school and, just to make the situation sound less idyllic, has had his plans for outdoor games thwarted by a sudden downpour of rain. True, he may be a little irritable at first, or hang around his parents or the kitchen and make a nuisance of himself for a while. Soon, though, he is likely to wander up to his room. The first irritation at the frustration of his plans mastered, he will survey his books and toys. Images of previous happy times spent with them will emerge in his mind. He will select the one or other that promises most pleasure gain at the time. He may even voluntarily add some more delay-frustration to his chore by thinking of friends he could call up or making plans for something special to do. In any case, he will know that it was only the rain that spoilt his fun, and he will not blame his parents for it. He will be more entranced by the potential pleasure from his toys than by the temptation to vent his ire on them for having to stay indoors. He will hardly stay for long in a sulk over his misfortune; you will find him engaged in something else, with the absorption normal and happy children are able to display in any task they engage in. If parents and educators only knew what a complex process is really taking place in order to make such a seemingly simple situation possible! If they only knew how many things could have gone wrong along that path, they would be grateful and confident rather than anxious and irritated by some minor discomfort which child behavior so often implies. Of course, not all situational challenges can be met, even by normal children, so easily in their stride as the above one. From time to time, their ego needs outside support. If this comes through, all is well. Therefore, parents and educators may be eager to know just how to support an ego in a moment when it meets a task somewhat be­yond what it can cope with.
      There is no better way of finding out than watching closely what happens if an ego cannot perform. The children who hate furnish us with a wide range of illustrations for that, and from them we may get ideas and suggestions of how we might meet the challenge of ego support for those whose problems are less severe. It is with this in mind that the following description of disturbances of ego function should be of interest to all, even those whose children's troubles differ sharply from the problems that beset those youngsters whose behavior we are about to put before you.
     We think that all practitioners and all the teachers and parents of normal children, as well as those who survive in treatment or group care situations with disturbed ones, would benefit from knowing just what the job of a normal ego is, during a day's living. Since the complexity of the well-functioning ego is usually hidden behind the smooth performance of its job, the specific observation of the ego whose function is disturbed might give us the clues as to what really is going on, even where things go well.
     In the following pages, then, we are making a purposeful detour, are committing an equally purposeful one-sidedness. To avoid all major misunderstandings, the following facts should be kept in mind while reading about the "ego that cannot perform." The fact that we concentrate on the issue of "disturbances" of the ego function does not imply that we want to explain them. This chapter is meant entirely to be on a descriptive level. All questions of just what may cause a specific disturbance are purposely excluded here.
     This chapter tries to describe the job the ego is supposed to perform in specific life situations. The illustrations used cannot, of course, show the ego isolated by itself, but are forced to describe whole life situations, including the emotions and impulses in the handling of which the ego of our children fails. This may give, to the cursory reader, the appearance that our illustrations try to imply that the disturbedness of the ego function is considered by us to be the "real cause" for things going wrong to begin with. No such implication is meant. All we try to show is what it looks like when an ego fails in a specific life task in a specific situation. The illustrations must be read with this very clearly in mind.
     The headings we give the various ego tasks, unfortunately, could not be kept on the same level, for linguistic reasons. We would have liked to name all of them either after the disturbance implied, or the function to be disturbed, or the situation in which ego failure takes place. To remain so consistent in nomenclature would have raised great language problems. We sacrificed, therefore, logical consistency in favor of readability. In each item, however, no matter what the title we gave it may sound like, we want to describe what task a normal ego really would have to perform in certain specific life situations. No more is implied.
     The listing of our twenty-two points is, of course, somewhat arbitrary. Some of them are more complex than others. There is a good deal of subtle overlapping among them. Besides, each one of them can be disturbed in one and perfectly intact in another child. In short, the question of which of those disturbances appear in what syndrome formation is a problem not touched here as yet. It constitutes, though, an important issue for further research.

1. Frustration Tolerance

     If we say that children have an unusually low "frustration threshold," we really refer to two entirely different situations. The first one is more or less a case of "impulse breakthrough." This means that a particular child, when exposed to a situation that might be frustrating, does not allow himself to be frustrated, but insists upon a total gratification of the full impact of impulses waiting to be released. For the practitioner this constitutes a great problem and is one of the reasons why such children seem so intolerable and unmanageable when placed with more "normal ones" in the same program or the same home. Unable to take even mild frustrations, they insist on pouring the whole power of impulsivity into the open no matter how disastrous the result.
      The second situation referred to by the term "a low frustration threshold" is equally exasperating for the educator, but involves a rather different psychological problem. In this case, the children allow themselves to be exposed to some minor doses of frustration, but are totally unable to handle the feelings which are produced by that frustration. The irritation these soon cause is not so much a breakthrough of their original impulsivity, but is the result of the aggression, anxiety, or panic produced by the situation itself. While able to enter, for a short while, a potentially frustrating situation, they seem to be hopelessly disorganized as soon as the first frustration effects set in. They develop frustration panic, aggression, and destructive outbursts in situations the more normal child would easily "take in his stride."
     In both situations, it is obvious that the ego doesn't do its job. In the first case, it seems helpless in view of an onrush of impulse intensity or some "impulse pile-up" and cannot block the break­through of impulsivity no matter what the price. In the second case, the ego seems helpless when confronted with the quantities of aggression, fear, discomfort produced by even mildly "frustrating" situations, and the child breaks into disorganized confusion in the face of even low frustration doses.
     Both situations reveal by indirection what a complex job the healthy ego really has to perform and how what is really the result of quite specific ego functions is frequently taken for granted and hardly noticed until something goes wrong.
     Our Pioneers certainly provided us with ample evidence about the mechanics of "frustration tolerance," by the obvious breakdown of ego control in a wide variety of situations. They were especially low in their ability to block any ongoing impulse push for even short periods of time, and the helplessness of their ego in view of even mild doses of frustration-produced aggression or fear was pathetic to watch. Even in the midst of a happily enjoyed game the slightest additional hurdle to be met or mild frustration to be added would throw the whole group into wild outbursts of un­structured bickering, fighting, disorganization, and griping. Even small quantities of limitation, no matter how wisely imposed, and how realistically designed, would bring forth temper outbursts which, in other children, would only happen as a result of exposure to extreme threat or mishandling.

The kids burst out of the station wagon in their usual exuberant mood and barged madly up the steps into the house. Luckily, this time the door was open so the usual pounding, kicking of door, etc., wasn't necessary. I was in my office tied up in a phone call and the door was closed. Mike yelled for me, shouting something about his jack knife which I was keeping in the drawer for him. I put my hand over the receiver and said "O.K., come on in." But the lock had slipped on the door and he could not open it. Before I even had a chance to excuse myself from my phone conversation, and say "Just a minute, I'll be back" he was pounding on the door, kicking it, calling me a "sonofa­bitch" repetitatively. I opened the door and gave him his knife. Even this failed to quiet his furor and, when I commented on the obvious fact that I hadn't even meant to make him wait, that the lock had slipped, all I got was a snarling, contemptuous "Shit." (Entry: 4/7/47, David Wineman)

One of the most regularly occurring frustration reactions, during the early phase of treatment, would be produced when, on our numerous station wagon trips, we had to stop and wait for traffic signal lights. This was intolerable to the children. Even though they knew that this delay would be automatically terminated in thirty to forty-five seconds, though they could so to speak see it right out there in front of their noses, still they were unable to handle their tension. Aggressive behavior would break out: throwing things at the counselor who was driving, cursing and hitting each other, etc. Shouts of "Goddamit, let's go, hit the bastard up there, what the hell are we waitin' for," would fill the air.

2. Coping with Insecurity, Anxiety and Fear

     The description, diagnosis and explanation of the high number of anxiety stages and fears our children displayed over the years, would be an interesting task in itself. The attempt to get at the roots of some of these anxiety stages constituted an important part of our total therapeutic job.
      All this, however, is an entirely different story from the one we want to get into here. We are not interested, at this moment, in the description and evaluation of the anxieties and fears children have, but in the problem of just what their ego does with them. It is true that in cases of a classical anxiety neurosis the role of the ego in the production of the final symptom is so submerged that it becomes hardly visible without painstaking reconstruction. Yet, the task of coping with anxieties and fears is not limited to the egos of anxiety neurotics--it is part and parcel of the daily job to be fulfilled by any ego, even that of the most healthy child. It seems to us that this factor is worthy of special emphasis. Most children have a wide array of techniques available with which they cope with minor or medium-sized quantities of anxieties and fears. Without stretching terminological distinctions too far, for the purpose of this study we might want to differentiate roughly between such stages of anxiety and fear which are very reality-related--where there is at least a large factor of real reason for "danger" inherent in the situa­tion which produces the fear--and more "neurotic" types of anxieties--where the emotional state thus named seems to have little relevance to actual outside stimuli. It seems, in the main, to come as an "onrush from within." It would be convenient to call the first type of experiences "fear," the second "anxieties," but we know that common language usage cannot be pinned down to such willful distinction.
     Most youngsters have a wide variety of ways in which to cope with situations of reality-determined "fears": their ego gives a clear­cut danger signal, and then proceeds to utilize any one of the tech­niques so amply described in psychiatric literature. A child may simply decide to sharpen his reality testing, so as to be more vigilant in the future. He may gain security from practicing realis­tic skills of danger avoidance or danger-victory, as the child does who happily learns how to box and wrestle, when he suddenly finds himself confronted with survival in a neighborhood group tougher than the one he was used to before. Others may simply put much effort into learning to avoid the danger, without having to leave the danger-involving activity itself--as, for example, the child who learns to master the cautious use of ax or firearm instead of having to develop anxious avoidances of such preoccupations altogether. The most reasonable way out, for others, is simply a readiness to ask for help around the danger area, as any happy child in a cheerful learning situation at school would do when confronted with a sudden hurdle in his pursuit of problem-solving. When confronted with unavoidable areas of danger that cannot be met, a child may decide to surrender the dangerous occupation area but may search for substitute gratifications in similar, more sublimated, or otherwise safer areas, thus balancing the partial loss an avoidance withdrawal would imply.
     For another child, the emotional tie to a beloved person present at the time of danger, or the exposure to a "secure" and acceptant group atmosphere, may suffice to cope with fears which might have kept him from entering an activity.
     The techniques used by children to cope with anxiety stages from within have been equally well described, and most lists of so-called "mechanisms of defense" could easily serve as a rather complete inventory. Some children simply hang on to an activity structure, so that minor doses of inner anxieties and fears can be taken in the stride of a well-planned activity program. Others develop supplementary daydreams to outbalance the otherwise dangerous loss of security that might come with an anxiety attack or withdrawal necessitated on the basis of neurotic fear or compulsive restriction of the life space. Others, again, manage to stretch their skill of gaining security through emotional ties to people they love from a technique to meet outside danger into an effective weapon against anxiety from within; with the friendly teacher around, the anxiety attack remains tolerable, while it would lead to panic or total withdrawal if it had to be suffered in "emotional mid-air." Some children, again, manage to build partial avoidance techniques around their symptom area quite skillfully into their total life space, so they can remain protected from too serious anxiety attacks without being considered more than "somewhat fussy or peculiar." They often even get understanding adults in their surroundings at least to tolerate if not respect their special "ritualistic avoidance machinery" and thus live with their anxieties without too much loss in their total life diet.
     For both fear with real danger elements and anxieties from within, most children manage to use displacement and acting out in daydreams as a rich resource. Clinging to fantasies of power, force, indestructibility or omniscience, or acting out terrifying play behavior or bravado gestures, they cope happily with what other­wise might become a state of panic or an anxiety attack.
     Only in extreme cases, where the outside danger is too serious and too hopelessly unpredictable to cope with, and where the inside danger is based on too unbearable conflicts of guilt, do ordinary children resort to extreme reality denial on the one hand, or total repression on the other hand. Where the size of the outer or inner problem to be avoided justifies it, even the use of such extreme techniques is not considered as pathological as the techniques themselves might imply. We expect the child that would suffer total loss of love from the most important adults in his life for even a minor sex thought to have to repress sex curiosity far beyond what other children would have to do. It is not surprising that the imminent danger of total destruction through warfare leads even adults into stages of unrealistic but very comprehensive denials of all outside reality pointing to such dangers. Only in extreme situations would the more or less normal person resort to techniques otherwise reserved for more elaborate degrees of pathology, and the very existence of the "extreme situation" takes away the clinical stigma from such behavior.
     The children we deal with here cope with anxieties and fears of all sorts in much the same way. There seems to be little doubt, however, that the following statements would characterize them and set them somewhat apart from their less or differently disturbed age mates.
     The ego is pauperized in terms of specific attempts to deal with specific anxiety, fear, or insecurity feelings. It seems to be especially poorly equipped with those techniques which might reduce the fear or anxiety reaction to a minimum and keep other ego functions and activities intact. Even milder feelings of fear or anxiety may lead to total control breakdown, while other children would become anxious, but would still be able to carry on, especially if help were given.
     Their ego seems to have to reach to rather extreme and drastic measures, which mainly lie along two lines. One can be described as total flight and avoidance, in which an otherwise pleasure-promising activity is abandoned in panic and avoided in the future, if even mild anxiety or fear elements are involved. The other is ferocious attack and diffuse destruction, where whatever is within reach, or whoever is near, becomes the immediate object of attack, or where the children "tear off on a binge of general wild behavior and destruction" in a more diffuse way.
     They have a tendency to react so fast by these extreme techniques that self-awareness of the very experience of insecurity, anxiety, or fear, has no time to develop, or, if it does, is totally repressed. From their point of view, their panic flight and anxiety-based destructiveness are undifferentiated from a case of real disgusted withdrawal from an unpleasant situation, of triumphant display of aggression and courage. It is a problem for the clinician as well to learn how to differentiate flight and destruction which are based on such anxiety attacks from their genuine counterparts.
     Where their ego chooses less extreme measures but tries to cope with fear and anxiety on a displaced-fantasy level, it is still incapable of enough organized and simple fantasy structures to do the job. It has to resort, even then, to heavily prop-loaded fantasies, and nearly always involves extreme acting out. Thus, where a less dis­turbed child would gain comfort in an anxiety state from a day­dream of fairy-tale power, our children would have to try to act like wild beasts, biting, threatening, tearing around, so that what their ego had obviously designed as a fear-coping mechanism created an additional source of conflict and problem with the world around them. In short, their ego, even where it tries to cope with anxiety stages, seems to be under such time pressure that it does not act reality-wise. For, even where Joe bites Larry out of fear, Larry is liable to react to the biting rather than to its original intent, and additional complications on the scene of actual life are the price the ego pays for such clumsy attempts at anxiety-coping.

Practically the whole first year he was with us at Pioneer House, Mike had almost nightly attacks of excitement and aggressiveness at bedtime which would reach a climax when the counselor would leave the sleeping room after the story reading. His antics were very disturbing to the rest of the group. He would make high banshee wails, striking out at his pillow like an imaginary attacker, muttering fierce counterthreats against it (I'll kill you, bastard, bitch, mother fucker). Or he might branch out into vicious aggression against one of the other children mixed with teasing erotic seduction of the other into his wild mood pattern, with occasional sex play thrown in. Inevitably, every evening, we would have to take him out and sit with him for sometimes thirty to forty-five minutes. He would usually start out on a high plane of hysteric euphorics with whoever was holding him, again repeating with the adult some of the erotic aggressiveness he had displayed toward the children, wriggling and wanting to dart through the house so that he would have to be physically restrained by light holding until he reinstituted some controls. All along the only verbalization that was possible at all was gently soothing reassurance like "O.K., Mike, let's quiet down, everything's going to be O.K., you know it's like this every night. When you quiet down a little, you can go back to bed." Should we make any attempt to probe, to ask him what was bothering him, we got absolutely nowhere; as a matter of fact, it only increased his upset. Gradually, after about a year at the Home, Mike began to show definite indications of some new abilities to conceptualize some of his fantasies through words as well as through acting them out and thus, in connection with bedtime behavior, we were slowly able to get him to talk. Finally, he was able to actually say that every night he was "real scared" that someone was going to "get him" and that this was worse after the counselor left and he was alone with the "guys." In this way, we were able to make the connection clear to him: "When you're scared, you get wild." It took a year before this point was reached with Mike.

The afternoon activity consisted of making very simple leather belts. The boys responded quite well, with the exception of some open gripes about how "hard" this stuff was to make. Most of them were quite interested and things weren't going too badly. Joe, one of the very last to get into the crafts room, happened to come in just at the precise moment when Larry was squawking about how hard the "darn things were to do." This apparently disturbed him, for he looked questioningly at me and Larry (I was helping Larry at this moment), grabbed his belt materials, ran out of the room into the toilet and flushed his mate­rials down, shouting out to the others that he wasn't going to monkey with this "goddam junk that nobody couldn't do." The aftermath was even more ironic. He came back and began to snipe at me because now he "didn't have nothin to do . . ." (Entry: 1/1/47, Barbara Smith)

3. Temptation Resistance

     An organized ego can give clear-cut "danger signals" if situations arise which "appeal" to impulses the gratification of which would lead to danger or guilt. An organized ego should also have a certain amount of "emergency energy" available, to throw into the fight whenever impulses are especially "tempted" by a situation in which the child may find himself. It is true that no ego is entirely fool­proof along this line, and the idea that even the best of us may fall has become proverbial. But it seems that a certain amount of "special temptation resistance" is one of the normal tasks any ego has to live up to, and its inability to do so would be a disturbance of a special kind. With our youngsters, of course, temptation resistance is low. This means it doesn't even take a very heavy impulse, or the onrush of severe pathology, in order to produce a piece of unacceptable behavior. Often enough, these children are acting so much worse than they really are--by which we mean to indicate that even mild action potentials along the line of mischief or delinquency are easily mobilized in them, provided something in their life situation "brings out the worst in them." It is interesting to state, however, that often enough that "worst" has to be "brought out." Just what is it that "brings out the worst in children" anyway? For the practitioner's sake, we would like to arrange the most frequent "tempting" elements in children's lives around three categories:

Situational Lure
     It seems that the mere presence and existence of certain gratifica­tion potentials is often enough to bring out impulses along that line into open action, even where such impulses were momentarily dormant or at least not very intensive at all. Few children, for instance, will withstand the sight of an accessible jungle gym, even though a need for climbing has hardly been among their priorities a few minutes ago. The presence of a large space to run in, a tunnel with certain echo chances, columns or trees around which to chase and hide, will immediately produce running, yelling, chasing, hiding behavior even though there is no special need for such activity.
      Similarly, it doesn't take the full mobilization of the dormant urge of one of our youngsters for stealing for him to take some money that is left lying around, or the presence of which in the pocket of an abandoned coat is an irksome challenge to resist. It is better not to leave a football, hockey stick, or capgun lying on the chairs when we bring a group in for a discussion, ready though they may be to have a serious talk. The very sight of such mobility­gratification opportunities would "tempt" even a well-behaved child.
     In short, even where specific impulsivity in a certain direction is not high at the moment, the mere accessibility and visualized usability of gratifying activities constitutes, in itself, a heavy pull toward acting out.

This afternoon, Shirley D. and I took the group to the zoo. It was a lovely spring day, temperature just right, gay Saturday throngs but not too crowded; the youngsters had a really marvelous time, with the exception of a neurotic sulk by Donald when we simply had to move on from one of the monkey cages to which he had formed a mysterious but strong attachment and where he was feeding one of the monkeys with his peanuts. This insistence on moving on was necessary out of group reasons since the others were getting quite restless and beginning to climb up on the outer rail, etc. All of the exhibits fascinated them, although they were always much more on the verge of climbing across guard rails than many of the other spectators. In some respects their behavior was quite typical for fairly active children until we got to the natural fish exhibit. This proved to be a veritable booby trap for youngsters with the disturbance patterns of our kids. For the natural fish exhibit was exactly as its name implies. While everything else in the zoo is caged in and protected from its human relatives, the fish in this particular part of the zoo are swimming comfortably within reach in a swiftly running but very narrow artificial stream. You see them just as in real life. Although there are signs in bold print reading "Do Not Disturb" "Trespassing is Punishable by Fine," the children were unable to resist. Harry suddenly announced "Those pike-jeez!" Off came his shoes and socks and with the same swift, flowing movement he was scurrying in the stream like a frenetic water bug and the others, with the exception of Larry, who immediately showed his characteristic anxiety and withdrawal at such taboo behavior, swarmed in after him. Other children, standing around and equally fascinated by the sight of those catfish and pike so temptingly close, were quite shocked by this display. (Entry: 5/4/47, David Wineman)

I took the group for a walk around the neighborhood at their request. It was a balmy, spring night and as we got near the School of Social Work, Bill and Mike announced they wanted to go up to see "Fritzie Witzie." I said "O.K." and that the other guys and I would go up, too. The place was half deserted; Fritz was in his office and not with anyone and it looked like a nice opportunity for a friendly visit. Somehow, in the melee, Bill and Mike were gone for a while and then showed up again, saying they had been to the lavatory just around the corner from Fritz' office. Then we went home and had an uneventful bedtime. Fritz reports, however, that the next morning the Dean of the School, who occupies the office across from his, was missing some money from his desk--about $2.00 in nickels that he had in the top drawer. When the group came home from school today, we talked with them about it and finally it narrowed down to Bill and Mike. After some considerable alibiing and stalling around, they finally admitted it. This is what happened: while they were milling around in Fritz' office, they noticed the Dean's door open. Naturally, they were curious and peeked in, and then saw a jar filled with sharpened pencils which he always keeps on his desk. They went over to look at the pencils, and, once so close to the desk itself, began to rifle it. When Fritz talked with them about it, they were not defiant and surly as they usually are after a confession of theft. They seemed abashed and embarrassed, especially Bill, who said, "Gee, Fritz, we really only wanted to come up and see you ... Do you think we can come again ... Will this get you in trouble in school?" (Entry: 4/20/48, Joel Vernick)

"Gadgetorial" Seduction
      It would appear that things actually talk to children, and suggest that they want to be used, somewhat in the way the fairy stories imply that children would "understand the language of flowers and birds." It seems that they have an inordinate need to enter the various activities a specific gadget appears to suggest. Thus a gun suggests manipulation, trigger-pulling, pointing, with certain throat noises accompanying the act. A piece of clay "suggests" the possibility of molding, manipulating, or maybe throwing it. A tree suggests climbing, a fence triumphant hurdling--whatever the specific gadget may be, it really seems to "invite" children to its use.
     This fact has not been given the weight it deserves. For a long time suspicious of such argument because it sounds too much like an easy alibi for the mischievous exploit of harmless equipment, or a somewhat overanimistic interpretation of the lifeless things of this universe, we finally come back to it as a rather puzzling fact. Without at all being able to explain why this is so, we feel that the practitioner will agree with us that the inability to explain should not blind us any longer to taking this fact seriously, as it deserves. In short, even the ego of a normal child has a specific function to fulfill, whenever visualizing gratification-promising gadgets whose specific use is not appropriate at the moment. Without having had any impulse toward destruction on its hand, a child's ego may suddenly have quite a job to do along that very line, just because of that darned gun lying around . . .

This being Easter vacation, the group was taken for a two-day overnight to the E. hostel where they had been once before during the summer of '47. They were really quite positive toward the place and especially toward Mr. E., a jovial, placid man, quite in sympathy with our program. He was, however, quite put out with them because of some rather reckless behavior in one of the lodges, in which they really messed up some spring beds by jumping on them just after Mr. E. had finished showing us through the building. As soon as he got out of sight they began to war whoop around and do acrobatics on the springs which were exposed, the mattresses being stored away until summer. In so doing, they did some damage to the springs. This was all the more striking because they were not in a wild mood, they like the place and Mr. E., want to come back. But the sight of those naked spring mat­tresses in that big empty room was too much for them. (Entry: 4/8/48, David Wineman)

I took Mike downtown today for his shopping trip. In addition to regular shopping, he also had a gift coming--a rabbit's foot--which I had promised him, and we went upstairs to the toy department where, unfortunately, they had some bowie knives on display. Mike was fasci­nated and, although I tried to divert him,. he swiftly picked up the plastic bowie knife, hefted it and, although I made an interference gesture and said "Put it down, Mike; maybe another time we can buy one," it was too late for he already had sailed it down the aisle. As it was, no one was in the path of the knife, but the floor manager was quite indignant as he huffily put it back on the counter ... (Entry: 2/5/48, Emily Kener)

Contagibility
      More "tempting" even than accessibility of space or seductiveness of gadgets as such is the visualization of enjoyment processes in action, the perception of ongoing activities enjoyed and indulged in by people. The mere fact that a youngster sees one of his less relaxed contemporaries throwing things around, banging his fork against the plate ferociously, jumping up and crawling under bed and table, may in itself suddenly set loose behavior in him--of which he really hadn't thought until that very minute. In short, it seems as though sometimes behavior will "spread" and become "infectious" by the very lure its visualization implies.
     We have named this phenomenon "contagion," and have been puzzled by its mysteries for many years. Some of it is very complex indeed, and has led us to such elaborate assumptions as the "exculpation magics of the initiatory act."1 Other such instances seem heavily tied up with social relationships and prestige patterns. In a special research project we have had a chance to explore some of the peculiar laws it follows when viewed with such complexity in mind. 2 Sometimes the phenomenon seems to involve subtle issues, as, for instance, the problem of "impulse-control balance" and the machinery of anxiety assuagement and guilt. But the most basic effect within the whole complex of phenomena is this: sometimes the mere visualization of acted-out behavior itself becomes the stimulus that gives intensity to a previously dormant urge, or throws the ego's watchfulness overboard, or does both.
     Needless to add, individuals differ widely as to the conditions under which they would "contage," the impulse areas in their lives which would be open to such type of suggestibility, the people and status roles which could initiate contagion for them, what the counterforces might be, and how high their "contagibility" is altogether. Suffice it to say here, for our children contagibility was extremely high, and their ego was more than usually helpless con­fronted with contagion challenges. Even in areas and at times where their ego was capable of considerable amounts of impulse control, or had just made a serious resolve to be more vigilant, it found itself helpless in view of contagion effects.

Before dinner tonight, the group was scattered around the living room floor playing with various quiet games--checkers, parchesi, cards. All was quiet and peaceful until Mike, who was playing cards with Andy, picked up one of the cards and idly sailed it across the room. Then he sailed another one, this time calling attention to it. Andy then whooped gaily and heaved several cards around. Danny, clear on the other side of the room, began to throw checkers. When Dave (executive director) started to interfere, it had no effect on the situation whatever, and Bill picked up the checker board, saying, "Watch this one," and heaved it. Larry elatedly grabbed a small wooden bowling pin and raucously threw it in the fireplace. The others were also throwing whatever was around and within reach--the air was thick with checkers, cards, pieces of candy, all in motion. Andy especially was exploiting the whole episode and Dave finally removed him from the room, taking him into the office where he had, to finish the whole show, a screaming tantrum which lasted about twenty minutes. (Entry: 9/7/47, Barbara Smith)

     All in all, these three phenomena, situational lure, gadgetorial seduction, and contagibility, are of great importance for the ade­quate evaluation of what our children did, as well as, of course, for the problem of behavioral management itself. We shall meet all these phenomena again in other contexts. At this point, what inter­ests us most is the inference that a person's ego, no matter how well or badly it functions in its overall tasks, may sometimes vary widely in the efficiency with which it fulfills its "temptation resistance" job. Our children had obviously disturbed "ego functioning" along this line, a fact which constituted a problem the seriousness of which we shall be able to appreciate when we arrive at our discussion of treatment techniques. The problem of just how to strengthen this specific ability of an ego to deal adequately with temptation situations, however, is not interesting only from the angle of dealing with the children who hate. It seems to us to be of primary importance for all educators and parents along the most normal line of educational tasks.

4. Excitement and Group Psychological Intoxication

     We don't really know what the peculiar phenomenon called "excitement" is. The conditions which bring it about, the degree to which individuals are "caught" by it, vary widely and could stand more specific exploration. In general, it might be correct to say that two things happen more or less simultaneously--intensity, urgency, and vehemence of "impulses" goes way up, while the controlling forces of the personality seem to be reduced, either in power or in the quality of their functioning.
      With children, we find two situations around which such states primarily seem to develop. (1) They often show a sudden increase of impulsivity on an individual basis--either for no apparent reason "from within" or in response to an especially stimulating activity their "excitement" reaches stages far beyond what we usually see them display. Any normal child impresses us as being much more "wild" at some times than at others, or works himself into a stage of "overstimulation" in the process of a game or while playing with an especially seductive toy. (2) More interesting for our study is the type of "excitement" which seems to be generated under certain group psychological conditions. Beginning with some minor free­floating contagion of the one or the other more excited youngster, the whole group sometimes may break out into stages of impulsive wildness which surpass anything that we usually would expect of it. Such a "group mood" seems to be especially catching, and under its impact even otherwise controlled individuals are liable to get "higher than a kite." We call this phenomenon "group psychological intoxication," because it really approximates most closely the well­known state of toxic inebriation, with all its concomitants differing only in that there is no alcoholic stimulant needed at all. What gets groups into such a state is in itself a most fascinating question worth a study of its own. At this point, we are not interested in the causation of such states, but in the specific predicament in which the child's ego finds itself when in its grip. Basically, there is a tendency for a considerable "loss of control" by the ego, and the more complex ego functions, even where otherwise intact, seem to go out the window first. Reality testing may become so blocked that recklessness of behavior may become seriously dangerous. Even otherwise existing value signals are not heard any more, or receive no ego response. The "here and now" of gratification greed seems to be unobstructed. The sublimation level of gratification channels goes way down, until the individual acts like a "primitive" or a person who is obviously drunk.
     It seems to us, however, that this is not only a matter of degree, but that the ability of an ego to stand up under the impact of excitement and group psychological intoxication constitutes an item in its own right. It seems to us that, more or less independent from the question of just how much and what type of ego control a person has developed, the ability of the ego to stand up under those situations is a variable to be added to our psychological calculations. Even with normal children and adults, for instance, we can observe that some people of a high degree of control are apt to lose their heads entirely, even in a relatively minor excitement stage, while others, though impulsive and less controlled on the whole, seem to keep whatever ego controls they do have, even in the face of inten­sive excitational conditions. In short, it nearly looks as if it would be worth while to develop the concept of a "excitational and group psychological melting point of ego controls." It is this phenomenon that bothers us so much when even "nice" teenagers sometimes go hog wild under the impact of a group psychological orgy, and they themselves seem as unable as we to explain or understand what happens to them. The fact that generally low ego functioning or control power need not go parallel with a low melting point under the impact of excitation and group psychological intoxication is best documented by the amazing fact that some youngsters seem to be able to remain unaffected and "cool as cucumbers" where others, usually more controlled ones, "lose their heads."
     From the observations of our children, we think we can make the following generalizations which may be of interest to the parent and practitioner:
     With the exception of some specific cases where some of our youngsters would remain cool and calculating while others would lose their heads, most of the time the melting point of ego control under the impact of excitement and group psychological intoxica­tion is extremely low. It does not take much to throw these youngsters "for a loop," and exposure to even relatively mildly excited group moods is liable to cut the youngster off from whatever control patterns he would have available otherwise.
     The factor of high contagibility mentioned before increases the number of life situations which lead to total mayhem, while less contagible youngsters will be able to stay "out of them," limiting the problem area to fewer members of the group.
     The rapidity with which our youngsters are sucked into the whirlpool of excitement is great, so that counteractions by the super­vising adult have to be very fast indeed, and the diagnosis and anticipation of such states becomes a problem in itself. 2a
     With normal children there needs to be a certain "affinity' between the activity to be intoxicated by and the natural mood trend within the child at the time. There also seems to be a considerable limit in "distance," by which we mean the range within which the laws of contagion still hold. Thus, for instance, a better organized youngster exposed to a rather extreme scene of wildness into which he hasn't been worked up gradually will be slow to respond. If the wildness goes beyond what he himself would consider fear- and guilt-exempt, he will not only fail to respond, but will develop a "shock reaction." He will be frightened and indignant; he will withdraw or seek protection from his own temptations. 2b
     With our youngsters, the law seems to be that exposure to almost any type of excitement, no matter how similar or strange to their previous mood, is "catching," and that even extreme behavior forces imitation, leaving little leeway for individual freedom from the phenomenon.

Dinner tonight was marked by an overflow of excitement which boded ill for our after-dinner program. Andy was a veritable "high voltage center" of contagion, having infected Mike and Bill with his obscenity half way through the meal to such a point that we set up their remaining food for them in the adjoining living room. While those of us who were left (counselor Bette, Danny and Larry, and our house­mother, Emily Kener) were on dessert, we heard a hilarious screaming and shouting in front of the house with a furious blowing of horns. I rushed out to find Andy and the other two inching the wagon out into traffic, whizzing by at rush hour speed, by pushing on the starter. Seeing this, Danny, too, became immediately excited and tore out to join them and climbed up on the roof of the wagon. With considerable difficulty, I got them out of the wagon, whereupon the four of them rushed into the backyard and from here into the alley behind the Home. Holding a brief "council of war," they proceeded to climb up on the roof of the garage and pepper me with debris. I knew that the only way I could get them off was to climb up after them, which I did. I expected them to continue some place else which might be less dangerous. Screaming and whooping, they ran into the house and Andy, ringleading with virtuosity, egged the others on to throw rocks at me and also at the lights. On the way, incidentally, Andy slapped Emily viciously when she tried to stop him and also smashed a flower pot. By this time, they literally were so delirious that they didn't even know at whom they were throwing things--me, Bette, Emily, or each other. In this overflow of confusion, Mike and Bill picked up some pepper shakers, still on the table from our ill-fated supper, and began to heave pepper around wildly, in this way throwing it at each other as well as all over. The first time Bill was hit by pepper, he howled with rage and went after Mike, sprinkling it so badly into his eyes that he went into a fit of pain and rage. When Andy and Danny saw this, they got scared for the first time (thank goodness) and calmed down a little, and Emily and I ministered to Bill and Mike while Bette involved Andy and Danny in listening to the radio and a comic book story. (Entry: 9/4/47, Henry Maier, counselor)

5. Sublimation Deafness

     The undisturbed ego, when visualizing a situation, activity structure, or a gadget which is potentially usable to obtain certain satis­factions, will be able to differentiate the usage which the situation or the gadget "inherently" suggests and the use it might be put to, in violence of its inherent potentials, as a tool for some other momentary need. A happy and well-organized child, for instance, seeing clay or finger paint material in a moment of relaxation, will have a quick grasp of what gratification such material is "meant" to offer. He will begin to mold it, use it in a variety of ways which arts and crafts experiences might suggest; occasionally, and in moments of comparative disorganization or excitement, the same child may pick up such a piece of material to use it as a weapon of defense or attack rather than as a means for the expression of an artistic urge. Or, to change the context, chairs are usually suggestive of a chance to sit down in them. This seems to be their inherent, their "built-in" function. In a moment of total disruption in a riotous political meeting, the same chairs may suggest themselves rather as weapons for a good fight, in obvious contrast to their "inherent" meaning.
      With our children, it was easy to see how often the "natural voice" of situations and things would be out-yelled by the screams of their inside urges and impulses. It seems that they were "deaf" to the natural challenge of life around them, while sensitively geared to the push of their impulsivity from within. This ability to listen to the built-in, sublimational challenge of situations and things is a special function of the ego, the disturbance of which certainly poses a problem for the practitioner. The neglect of this type of ego disturbance has held up the educator and clinician considerably, and in a way has helped to cement a rather naive and unrealistic outlook on therapy, still to be found, from time to time, in recreation projects or even among clinically trained professionals. The general theory which still prevails and holds that disturbed children will become well if only they are surrounded by worth­while recreational tools and opportunities, and that their impulsivity will easily yield to sublimated order, if only such a pattern is put within their reach, is invalid. We would agree with the importance of having sublimation challenges available at all times. We would differ in the degree of optimism with which we would expect the mere exposure to sublimation challenges a sufficient force to move the child into accepting them. Where this works, the problem is one of neglect rather than ego disturbance to begin with. With the children we describe, "sublimation deafness" is not cured that easily. Needless to add, this very fact of "sublimation deafness" does, of course, constitute one of the greatest challenges and problems for the group leader and for the construction of a clinically wise program. Having to learn by trial and error methods, we were faced with prematurely destroyed materials, with game chances ending up in general mayhem and destruction, before we could diagnose the existent "sublimation deafness" range of the individual children and the group.

A typical scene in the upstairs playroom during the first month . . . Joe would be darting around the room in his usual erratic fashion. Part of the time he would badger Larry, flicking out at him for pure enjoyment. Then he and Sam would chase each other, wrestle a little bit, separate and maybe pick up one of the already smashed toys and carry the destruction one step further. In this way, he would brush up near the old typewriter we had sitting in the playroom. It was old but it still worked after a fashion. Joe would smash at it, full fist style, and then, when the keys got all gnarled up, in frustration begin to curse at it, "Y'old bitch"--smash-"yah"--smash. Counselor might call over, 'Want to type something Joe? I'll get you some paper." Joe's answer would be finally to knock the typewriter off the table and then kick at the keys before he dashed off in pursuit of Sam.

Andy sauntered into the upstairs playroom, picked up the box of erector set material and, after studying it for a moment, began idly to pitch the pieces into the fireplace--no fire--and then switched from this to throwing them at Larry, who is being severely scapegoated. (Entry: 12/15/47, Barbara Smith)

It was quite fascinating to see how the children used an old mahogany wind-up phonograph during the early stages in treatment. Tiring within minutes of its entertainment value as a record player, they would climb up and perch on its top and then jump off onto an adjoining piece of furniture. Or they would sail records at each other or against the wall. In view of the fact that, later on, record playing became one of their most popular activities, this initial unsublimated handling of the phonograph is especially impressive.

We took the group to the Sportsmans Show at Convention Hall, a large public, indoor arena, for which the sponsors of the Home had provided tickets. There was a profusion of guns and outdoor equipment and some natural born Indians at some of the exhibits. Although there was an initial flurry of interest, only Larry and Danny remained involved to any degree. We had to keep retrieving Mike, Bill, and Andy from the lavatory where they repeatedly escaped to smoke cigarettes. Once back out with the rest of the group, they would run around looking bored or nervously flicking through comic books, impervious, seemingly, to the allure and excitement of many of the items on display and small sideshow activities that were going on in some places.

     This contrast, by the way, becomes especially noticeable if we change from gadgets to live toys, especially animals like cats and dogs. The idea that the exposure to a dog would immediately make our youngsters respond to the challenge inherent in the culturally defined role dogs are supposed to play for children, or to the actual advance a specific dog might make to them, would be illusional indeed. His desire to be loved, his proverbial readiness to be loyal and companionable, his challenge for happy "have fun and play together" experiences so touchingly portrayed on calendars and posters, would be lost on our youngsters for a long time. Their reaction to the animals would depend less on the "inherent readiness" of a particularly well-chosen pet, and more on the level of ego disorganization at the moment at which they were confronted with him. Thus, for instance, exposure of our Pioneer House children to even the most cuddly dogs or cats in the early beginnings would have been disastrous. After a few moments of traditional cuddling and petting behavior, they would have reacted to the animal in terms of the impulse pile-up dominant at the moment, or in terms of the tempting willingness of the animal to be friendly, which, in their case, only meant temptation toward the display of wild quan­tities of sadism, power, and cruelty. Even at a later time, when we felt we could safely rely on the somewhat improved ego control and sensitivity to new gratification potentials in various walks of life, we had to remain watchful lest at any moment the original sublima­tional structure might collapse and the animals be mistreated. It takes an ego intact and sufficiently in control to perceive and exploit the natural, inherent, and culturally expected gratification potentials in the usual household pets. Their introduction into therapeutic life might be recommended as a test for achieved treat­ment rather than as an original therapeutic tool.

Bob Case, head counselor, reported to me that there was some sex play with the dog, Shep, over the weekend, the trio--Bill, Andy and Mike­being principally involved. They appeared to be using the dog as a new object for their sex crudities--wiggling hips and pushing out penis area of body in provocative way. I observed the same thing on Monday evening and on one or two other occasions. The pattern seems to be as follows: One or the other of them yells "Yeah, Mike" (or Andy or Bill, whichever the case may be) just as they do when they are obscene with each other, but they complete the gesture with the dog instead of each other. The dog gets excited (but not sexually) and runs over, sniffs and jumps around, whereby they start teasing him by running and then starting all over again. Danny has evolved a system of quite sadistic teasing, just as one would expect. He gets down on the floor with Shep, holds his legs and cuffs him, at first lightly and then harder and harder until the dog gets mad and starts to snarl and bite, which Danny lets him do and even encourages by putting his hand in his mouth, etc. Larry has developed a protector-pal relationship with the dog in which he lies on the floor, making fantasies of being attacked with Shep standing over him to protect him against his enemies. The fascinating thing about the dog, and it is already beginning to come out clearly, is that each child duplicates in his relationship to him some of the essential symptomatic patterns that occur in the relationships to humans:

Andy: Disdainfulness and fastidious aloofness plus some sex activity.
Mike: Sex excitement.
Bill: Sex excitement.
Danny: Sadistic-masochistic play.
Larry: Reaction-formation against powerful insecurity feelings by protector-pal fantasies. He, incidentally, has the strongest reaction of all to Shep's being isolated during meals. He originally promised Shep on his first day at Pioneer House that this was one place where "nobody ever gets locked up." (Entry: 2/1/48, David Wineman)

6. Taking Care of Possessions: Guaranteed Later Use

     The relationship of people to things owned can, of course, have the most complex implications. Such relationships may be highly dependent on attitudes to people of whom those things remind the owner; they may be filled with the ambivalences as well as all the other variabilities of interpersonal relationships. Besides, a lot of narcissistic investment may go into them, and occasionally the relationship to possessions--both inanimate and alive--may suffer all the distortions and deviations of the whole gamut of human emotions, through the range from healthy realism to pathological confusion.
      All this is well known, and we would, of course, expect the relationship of our youngsters to gifts, toys, money, clothes, property, and whatever pets they have to fall into the same category at any time.
     There was one thing that amazed us, though. At times, the relationship of a child to a possession as such was reasonably clear and simple, and even then he seemed to lack an ability which seems to be something rather special in the list of ego attainments. Even where the children openly coveted a possession and prized it, and even where their emotional relationship to it was relatively untinged by the complexity of the rest of their life, they didn't seem to know what to do with it. We mean--they didn't seem to have any capacity for what would constitute "responsible care" of the possession in question. For, no doubt, there is a certain minimum of respect and protection and care any possession does demand, if future use is to be guaranteed. It is this realistic minimum of "guarantee for the future" care which we have in mind, and which seems to be lacking at times, even where there is no special emotional complication in a child's relationship to an animal or toy. In short, we would expect our youngsters to lose, destroy, mislay, break possessions in the usual process of emotional ambivalence and confusion. We found, however, that even without that they simply seemed to be lacking in what is required to take care of or keep anything. This is why toys, fountain pens, watches, were used up so fast, why the turnover of wallets, flashlights, tools, was so great, even where we had not made mistakes in the choice of such items to begin with. With more com­plex mechanical possessions, by the way, there seems to be a recog­nition of the separateness of this ability to care for possessions even in normal adults. We might be sure of a friend's lack of ambiv­alence, but would still hesitate to lend him a typewriter, gun, or car, simply because some people without other emotional complications in their relation to the owner have no sense about the type of care possessions need, and cannot be trusted to treat them accordingly.
     This disturbance around the task of "responsible care" constituted quite a handicap, since gifts and possessions of somewhat more complex structure were often needed for other clinical considerations and since the low frustration tolerance and the confused paranoid thinking of the youngsters often made emotional catastrophies out of even minor losses. It was fascinating to notice how our youngsters, when their ego was enough improved to desire and accept without conflict certain possessions and gifts of a more sublimation-demanding nature, would ask the adult to take care of them temporarily. This was especially true as a temporary and rather realistic anticipation of their own confusion and forgetfulness under moments of excitement: before a game or a fight, or on a trip, or for overnight care, the adult would frequently be made the guardian of possessions, even though the same adult had just before that been the focus of some entanglement or conflict. They had, by that time, a sharp enough perception of "responsible care" as a separate life task, of which basically friendly adults are capable even while you are mad at them, so that they simply loaded us with this special task as an intermediary step.

I took the group on a special tour to various gas stations and out of the way restaurants for the purpose of collecting Pepsi-Cola tops, which they need for a huge prize contest which is now sweeping the country. They were delighted with their yield and there was much fantasy about all they would win, bickering about who had collected most tops, who was "in," who was "out," etc. They finally made a combine out of it and all was peaceful. The tops were kept in an old oatmeal box. When we pulled up in front of the house, they sailed out of the wagon in their usual pent-up style and in so doing whoever was carrying the box dropped it in the flurry. I called after them to bring it to their at­tention and not one of them would even turn around to pick up any of them--their precious tops which they had spent two hours collecting. Mindful that this could be the fuel for a later group blow-up, I went in and more vehemently called it to their attention and said I would be glad to help but didn't they think they could help me pick some up? Danny didn't even look up from his comic book, and Mike and Bill, giggling and running around the room, apparently didn't hear. Finally, Larry, the most anally penurious one of the lot, came out with me and helped me pick them up. (Entry: 3/15/48, David Wineman)

     This behavior was especially impressive because for once the group was really interested in collecting these items. How differently the normal child would have acted in guarding a collected treasure!

7. Newness Panic

     For a while we missed this entirely. We were so fascinated by the spectacle described in "treatment shock," that we were liable to interpret any one of the behavior messes we got into when our children were confronted with any challenge whatsoever as another instance of their special "resistance" against change. 3 We saw in almost any confusion of that type either their "sublimation deafness" or their rather well-demonstrated attempt to ward off all implications of love, permissiveness, and kindness, so dangerous to their old pattern of "life against adults."
      After things settled down a little, it became evident, however, that we had an additional deficiency of their ego to deal with, which is of a different sort and constitutes one of the greatest challenges to the program planner imaginable. The phenomenon referred to can be best described as a sort of "panic" which would hit those children whenever they were exposed to situations which are new.
     Of course, the question of what constitutes "newness" is a fascinating topic in itself. For the purpose of conciseness, let us be arbitrary and state that we shall refer to two different factors here, when using this term. Sometimes we mean by "newness" the fact that similar situations have not been experienced before (experientially new), while at other times we think more in terms of the youngsters' customary taste pattern and neighborhood style of life, compared with which the situations to which we expose them may have to be experienced as "strange" (sociologically strange). Under the first item falls the case where a child experiences something for the first time, and where this non-experiencedness in itself makes it impossible for him to perceive at all gratification potentials which this new experience might hold for him. Only after repeated and gradual exposure to such new experiences does the newness wear off, so that whatever perceptive acuities he might otherwise possess can help him size up the situation for what it really contains. The second phenomenon (strangeness) is especially noticeable in those instances where we deal with children whose taste patterns and behavioral styles are not identical with those of the book-reading and group-leading middle class. That means that such situations or such adult behavior is not only new to them, but seems "strange," which may have an undertone of being funny, ridiculous, frightening, despicable, as the case may be. This very "out of focusness" of the general atmosphere compared with what these children are used to may be sufficient to throw their cognitive apperception possibilities entirely out of gear. Needless to say, such inability to function in the face of new or strange life situations in itself constitutes one of the major hazards of an environmental total treatment design, and the assessment of just which life experiences or which adult behavior will throw the children into confusion on just that ground of newness and strangeness will constitute one of the major skills in program planning and treatment style for a long time to come.
     Equally interesting is the type of behavior which these children most usually show when flooded with "newness panic" of either type. Three styles of reacting to it seemed prevalent among our Pioneers.

Delusion of familiarity
     We first misinterpreted some of the statements they would make when we got to a new place, a part of town unfamiliar to them, as an attempt to "brag." However, the phenomenon became so clear that we soon noticed that no such implications were involved most of the time. It seemed to us then that they were merely reacting to the implication of newness by denying it and superimposing on this denial delusions of familiarity.

Enroute to Pioneer House, Larry kept bringing up at different points on the highway far from his parents' home that he knew this field and that farm house and this gas station. There were so many points mentioned that it is not conceivable that he could possibly have known all of them, especially in his diffused and detached state . . . (Entry: 11/31/46, Fritz Redl)

Sam: Hey, Joel, did you ever live up in Alpena?
Joel: No, Sam, I never did. I'm from New York.
Sam: Hey, you musta! Are you sure? I knew a guy that looked just like you. He had curly hair and everything just like you. He was a nice guy. Maybe if he wasn't you, he was your brother or cousin or something . . . (Entry: 12/4/46, David Wineman)

During the first month at Pioneer House every time we went out for a station wagon ride of any length at all Danny "saw" one of his uncles, who was a truck driver. He had a simply unbelievable number of uncles and they all, according to him, drove trucks. Each time that we would run across a big truck, he would egg us on to overtake it so he could say hello to his uncle. The group, by the end of the second week, poked fun at him, but he remained quite serious in his insistence that he was right and that he really was sure that the trucks we saw were driven by his uncles.

Assaultive mastery
Another reaction to "newness panic" especially where straight newness was mixed with "strangeness" in sociological style, seemed to consist of diffuse aggression, an intensive need to touch, manipulate, handle roughly, penetrate into, and explore everything within reach. Such "exploration," however, was quite different from the planned "casing" of a new place by an organized delinquent child. It had all the elements of panicky haste, nervous incompleteness, and flustering jumpiness, which marked it as a panic reaction rather than as goal-directed behavior from the start.

At the home of a friendly Board member who had invited us out to the country there was a kind of minor bedlam . . Joe insisted on scurrying around poking through a secretary style desk they had in a den off the living room. There was no question of "casing" or "swiping" anything since our hosts, myself, and the counselors were in plain sight and a seasoned delinquent like Joe would never expect to get away with anything under conditions like that. It was rather a restless, aggressive coping with the unaccustomed novelty of a house like this with its luxury and many strange new items. The others too were seized by this frenzy of aggressive handling and poking around. Larry knocked over all of the fireplace implements--whisk broom for ashes, shovel, coal tongs--in a frantic movement to use some of them, .and for good measure knocked the screen into the smoldering fireplace. Danny, of course, invaded the children's toy room and was shifting his clumsy bulk over tiny little fire engines and trucks. Andy insisted on doing acrobatic tricks from the furniture and was most difficult to calm down. (Entry: 1/18/47, Fritz Redl)

Buffoonery and ridicule
One of the most primitive ways of reacting to what is new or strange is, of course, ridicule (the new and strange thing or person is simply silly, funny, ridiculous beyond words). Even more primitive is a type of behavior for which the word "buffoonery" is only a feeble metaphor. It consists of behavior commonly called "goofing off" among the children themselves, and can be described as "clowning" only if all coherent structure or really witty comment is taken out of that term's meaning. It consists of a combination of grimaces and jerky and disjointed movements which are meant to be funny even though they do not contain any clue as to just what they are supposed to ridicule. All that, together with an astounding rate of turnover of gestures, postures, and mobility combines to form something like "diffuse clowning."

During a lull in the conversation which had been pretty positive after the very happy special treat of horseback riding, Joe suddenly said to Vera (counselor) very softly and gently, slightly mimicking her soft Canadian accent, "Vera . . . ?" and then paused. Vera answered, "Yes, Joe," to which he replied just as softly, "Are you gonna take a shit when we get home?" The group responded by cackles and snorts of derision, delighted by his coarseness. It seems as if being nicely treated by friendly adults who are interested in them is a little hard to get used to. The way Joe led her on with his soft intonation was just classical. We both thought he was going to make a very friendly, related comment. (Entry: 12/4/46, David Wineman)

I took a group over to the Arena Gardens for their first visit to an indoor skating rink this afternoon. They had all been clamoring for it, except the blase Henry who chose to go to a movie instead. We had to stand in line for about 10 minutes before the rink opened. There was a huge crowd of all shapes and varieties of pre-adolescents and adolescents around. Mike started to clown around, acting like a drunk or "goofy" man, crossing his eyes and staggering around. Andy followed suit and added the innovation of throwing his hat up in the air, catching it on one of the fixtures and making me retrieve it. Joe was swooping around pretending he was skating already and Larry was making disjointed clown-like movements. Here again the difference between our group and most of the huge throng of kids around struck me forcibly, for none of them were acting anywhere near as exaggeratedly giddy as our kids and they couldn't all have been old timers. (Entry: 1/13/47, David Wineman)

     By the way, we are aware that normal children occasionally show similar behavior. However, the smallness of the "newness item" which sets such behavior off in our children and the distortional degree to which they will go under slight provocation confirm the fact that the functions supposed to help persons to cope with newness realistically are seriously disturbed. For, coupled with this display of panic behavior, there is also a nearly total absence of the type of behavior with which an intact ego would try to reduce new­ness anxiety realistically; our children were little interested in really exploring or understanding those new situations, did not ask questions where other children would have expressed curiosity, and were inaccessible to the offerings of adults to show them things, to explain and interpret. They obviously did not want to cope with the newness item. If anything, they wanted to deny it and ward it off. Therefore, any attempt on our side to help them "cope with it," increased their panic and with it the irrationality of their antics.

8. Controlling the Floodgates of the Past

     The amazing degree to which "fantastic and irrational behavior" may interfere in the lives of even otherwise "well-adjusted and normal" people has become nearly proverbial for "the culture of our time." We know that even people with good reality testing otherwise will often allow their own case history to interfere when it comes to handling their own children or to assessing the feelings of people around them realistically.
      The modern neurotic has been credited, by the very definition of his problem, with the right to have his case history creep up on him in such life areas as are directly related to his special symptomology. A person suffering from agoraphobia, for instance, may have all his ego functions intact, and may possess what is proudly referred to as a very "strong ego." Even he, however, will be expected to be unable to control his life reactions if something in the scenery comes too close to reminding him of a previous symptom­related trauma. Then, all of a sudden, his anxiety may flood his whole system, in spite of the fact that his reality testing is still intact. He knows there is no real danger from crossing a certain space, yet he will break out into cold sweat at the mere thought of having to do so. This means, actually, that only part of his ego function is well intact, that of reality testing. Another ego job is obviously not fulfilled--for he loses, against his own insight, all controls over the traumatic onrush from the past.
     Demanding, on this basis, the concept of "control over the flood­gates of the past" as a special function of the ego, which may be disturbed while other functions continue to work efficiently, it becomes obvious that in the lives of our children this special ego disturbance constitutes an enormously complicating factor. The difference of our Pioneers from the ordinary neurotic adult or the normal child lies primarily in two directions. The areas of life situations which may bring on such a sudden onrush of past case history beyond the ego's capacity to deal with it are not confined to special well-describable neurotic symptoms but seem to encompass a much wider range of things, and the totality with which a loss of ego control takes place once the floodgates of the past are opened is not comparable with anything the normal adult or child or the neurotic would do in a similar case.
     This is, of course, a technical challenge for therapy--and for anybody who is interested in custodial care of such children. For program, as well as adult handling, has to be planned constantly with this concept in mind, and any experience, well designed for all but this one point, may turn from a therapeutic blessing into behavioral chaos at the drop of a trauma. This is one of the reasons, by the way, why such children need the total environmental ap­proach, why the person around the child when he "acts-up" is more important in the total therapy than the strategy planner of the psychiatric map, and why the practitioner of the past has felt he has been helped so little in his task if only given basic insight into the disease's main design without practical hints for the manipulation of surface behavior. Needless to add, this very phenomenon is of great diagnostic value in work with children whose ability for verbal recollection or artistic expression of previous life traumas is as lim­ited as that of the Pioneers. The following illustrations are meant to render the flavor of such incidents rather than to take the place of a laborious interpretation of the process as such, which has been well described by other authors before.

Mike began singing "Here Comes the Bride" in dirty words when Betty (co-counselor) came into the room. Since there was already considerable group psychological excitement and this was just a final stir-up which would have precipitated a riot of obscenity and aggression, when Mike refused to stop immediately, he was removed. Larry then picked it up and again refused to stop upon request so that the head counselor, obliged again by reasons of group hygiene, had to remove him from the room, too. This was too much for Larry. Although usually docile and clinging to the adult and well aware that he is loved and well-treated, this spectacle of the head counselor actually removing him bodily played back into memories of brutality-loaded moments with his murderous stepfather. As if by a pre-arranged signal, the moment the head counselor began to move him, he unleashed a torrent of counter aggression, and hooked his legs in a steely scissors grip on a nearby table. I helped the head counselor take him to the office and finally it was necessary for me, too, to begin to help in the holding. His usual stuttering disappears in the rage states, his voice is actually projected at you, and the content of his verbalization is of the most aggressive sort, a wild and primitive torrent. In the giving up of partial reality testing, he began to revile the head counselor paranoiacally with accusations such as "You want to twist my arm off, you want to kill me, you want to hurt my muscles, you want to choke me" all of which things, as we know from his case history, his stepfather actually did threaten to do. Along with this phase of the attack came his most serious dropping of reality thinking with remarks like "I'll kill you, yes, I will (all with most primitive lunging, biting movements of his head), I'll throw something right through you." (Entry: 11/22/47, Paul Deutschberger)

After a visit from his mother, Bill suddenly and spontaneously, in a semi-detached way, went upstairs, announcing to no one in particular that he was going to take a shower. I went up after him because this was a notably queer impulse, he wasn't dirty, it was not shower time, he was not interested obviously in wild shower room play since there was no invitation in his attitude toward the rest of the group. Abstractedly he undressed himself and began to soap and wash himself, still retaining that kind of somnambulistic facial expression that had first attracted my attention. Suddenly, in a savage outpouring of verbalization, he began to curse with the most primitive swear words at nothing at all. When I asked what was wrong, he shifted to his mother, saying she was a no good bitch, a fucker, was never any good, he hated her, his goddam brother was mean and wouldn't help his father who was going to die and he, Bill, had to go home and help out. (Entry: 4/13/48, Paul Deutschberger)

In this sequence of behavior, we can see Bill between two stages of ego development: The earlier Bill, during the first stages of treatment, might have burst out in this way in the middle of a game that he joined after his mother left. Or, maybe at dinner or snack time that evening. By this time, however, his ego shows improvement 'in his assessment of social reality. He removes himself from the group situation to the privacy of the shower. While this is undoubtedly a gain, his ego is still quite helpless to cope with the impact of suddenly unleashed case history material per se--the outburst has to erupt even though in the safety of the shower room.

9. Disorganization in the Face of Guilt

     Guilt feelings are the signals by which a normal conscience makes itself felt when values for which it stands have been in­fringed upon. Thus, far from being something "pathological" in themselves, normal guilt feelings are one of the most essential constituents of a healthy personality.
      The main trouble here with the children we talk about is not that they have too many guilt feelings, but that they have too few. Just why that is so and what is wrong with the superegos of our Pioneers will be described in a later chapter. At this point, we have something else in mind, which remains an important task for the ego of any child. For, let us forget for a moment just how many justified guilt feelings a child may develop. The question still remains, what does he do with a guilt feeling when he has one? So, while the problem of guilt and conscience as such belongs to a chapter on superego functioning, the manipulation of guilt feelings once they are there belongs to the task assignment of the ego. In short, besides the problems our children show in terms of value identification and superego control to begin with, they even have trouble if they finally have a guilt feeling where it belongs. The normal reaction to guilt would be along the lines of insight into the nature of the offense, self-recrimination to the point of stir-up into change of self, gestures of appeasement toward victims of the guilty action, attempts at restitution of damage, some marginal defensive actions like avoidance of guilt-raising persons or places, and, most of all, if intimate ties are in the picture, a need to confess and "settle" bad feelings with people who count in one's life or their substitute. All this and more is well known. What we are less aware of is how serious things get if the ability to react normally toward guilt feelings is disturbed. For then, even if we have repaired a child's conscience so that it functions appropriately in giving the right kind of guilt productions, the child still remains a mess, because he doesn't know what to do with guilt feelings when he has them.
     Our Pioneers were characterized by the following: when producing guilt feelings as they should--which happened rarely enough in itself--they were unable to take the steps indicated above which might lead to their constructive extinction. Instead they showed all the chaotic reaction described in "coping with insecurity, anxiety, and fear." The therapeutic dilemma this throws us into, however, is much greater than in the anxiety case. For while we want to help children cope with anxieties realistically, we do not want to produce them through our treatment if we can help it. With superego-deficient children, however, the very production of guilt feelings where they belong becomes a therapeutic task, and we then face the dilemma of having to produce an emotion within them before they are ready to handle it. In fact, in our previous experimentation at Camp with a much larger number of children, this very dilemma began to bother us so much that we realized how important it would be to solve the ego problem first, before we built up superego functions for which the ego wasn't ready yet. This is another reason, by the way, why "value conversions" or "miraculous identifications with friendly adults or values" never last long, unless ego repair is attempted simultaneously. For such a prematurely virtuous child will show guilt, and then will break down under the pathology of his ego, which does not know what to do with it.
     As far as our children go, unable to travel the channels for realistic guilt-assuagement mentioned above, they would most frequently show behavior of the following type: unwillingness to talk about anything at all, aggression and sulk-hatred against the person to whom they had enough of a tie to make him a value-symbol for them, increase in the production of general irritability, aggression and destructiveness all over the place, final scapegoat focussing of the main bulk of irritation against an adult or another child usable for that purpose, increase of general resistance against any and all routine conformism and against even otherwise accepted adult demands. Since the illustration of these processes is too space-consuming, one illustration may serve for many.

Bill, who ordinarily is quite positive toward me, was quite rebellious when I reminded him that he wasn't supposed to hit golf balls over into the next door neighbor's yard. Instead of replying with his usual "O.K. Yo-Yo," (his and the group's pet name for me) and coming along with the suggestion, he snarled back at me, "Yer mammy" and knocked one over the fence deliberately. When I insisted that this was not acceptable and reminded Bill that I would now have to confiscate the club, he ran away, throwing the club at me. Five minutes later I found Bill trying to break down the office door with a two-by-four because he thought I had put the club in there. I relieved him of the two-by­four and asked him what was bothering him that he should act so "mean" this morning. Bill said that he was going "to take that club to school" or he wasn't going and I said "Now come, you guys never get to take your golf clubs to school anyway" but he was adamant and refused to go along so the group was taken without him. When I returned, Bill was even more upset and was angrily packing his clothes, saying that he wasn't going to stay at this "goddam dump no more" etc. I said nothing but just stayed with him, finally bringing out that something must be bothering him and that I was sure it wasn't just the golf club--what was it? First, Bill said that nothing was wrong and then angrily threw out, `That goddam Danny, he thinks he can shove everybody around." I replied that I hadn't seen Danny do anything special this morning to Bill or anyone else. Was Bill sure that was it. He didn't answer and I said, "O.K., if you don't want to talk about whatever it is, I guess we'll have to skip it but I think it would be better if you came out in the open ..." Finally Bill, in a gust of feeling, said, "I didn't keep none of it and I ain't going to get blamed for it . . . Last night Mike went over to that old lady that lives next door and gave her some flowers. I was with him and we saw she had a roll of bills this big (rolls up his fist). Mike said for me to watch out in the yard this morning and he would go over and swipe it and I did but I ain't got any of it and I won't get blamed for what he did. The wallet is hidden in the garage . . ." (Entry: 5/13/48, Joel Vernick)

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