Dr. Jonsson is head of Barnbyn, Skâ(Skå Children's Village), an institution in Sweden which is responsible for the care and treatment of its most severely disturbed children. The population is almost totally delinquent. Dr. Jonsson's clinical experience with this group and their families spans 20 years, and includes, besides administrative responsibilities, experience in individual treatment, group therapy, and family therapy. Besides this, the author, a child psychiatrist, has had training in sociology, criminology, and methodology. With this background, his book merits careful and respectful attention.
Dr. Jonsson's book does not deal with the entire range of delinquent boys, but rather that of its most severely disturbed segment. Noting that the great majority of male children and adolescents in Sweden have committed one or more breaches of the law, but that the number of children responsible for most of the grave crimes is very small, he sets