Adolescent Aggression: A Study of the Influence of Child-Training Practices and Family Interrelationships.

Seeking to identify scientifically the child-rearing factors and intrafamily relationships that lead to the genesis and development of adolescent antisocial aggression, the authors have accumulated and analyzed a tremendous amount of data obtained from carefully planned interviews and projective tests administered to two groups of adolescent boys and their parents, one presenting histories of aggressive antisocial behavior, and the other consisting of so-called normal controls. Purportedly breaking away from the more usual sociolegal or psychoanalytic approaches, the book represents a further application of the theoretical framework and methodology used by Robert R. Sears and his collaborators. In fact, Dr. Sears has written the enthusiastic foreword to this book, going so far as to predict that “the findings will provide a basis for the hope that one of the most tragic and dangerous forms of character distortion may some day be preventable.”