From the first page, the author of this book makes clear his approach to criminology. This is highly personal, focusing on the nature of individual offenders and strongly influenced by psychodynamic theory. The discussion is framed in concepts such as ego, id and superego, with descriptions of offenders and offending behaviours linked to Freudian concepts such as the period of ‘latency’. Also quite striking is the rather dated use of language, referring to offenders as ‘delinquents’, who are further grouped into categories such as primary delinquents and secondary delinquents, or described as ‘criminals’, and contrasted with ‘normal’ individuals. The book categorises offenders in ways which appear to me to be largely generalisations based on Freudian concepts, and which I did not find to be particularly helpful or enlightening. There is limited discussion of the role of social context, substance misuse or mental illness in offending. Discussion of types of offending is limited and rather idiosyncratic.

A number of areas will make for uncomfortable reading for the contemporary clinician, such as when the author suggests that when interviewing an offender, ‘there is a virtuoso role being enacted, a greater facing a lesser’ (p. 26), and that it is ‘The art of being able to “ manipulate the manipulator”’. He also quotes in this context the author Aichhorn (1944, 1965) as referring to, ‘The almost inbuilt ability of offenders to manipulate.’ Regarding sexuality, we read: ‘In the normal individual there is… a major heterosexual component but also a minor homosexual attachment’ (p. 92). Such perspectives are unlikely to have widespread support today.

As an introduction this book would have benefitted from an approach more in the mainstream of current thinking, and its highly individual perspective makes it of limited use to someone unfamiliar with this subject. I cannot recommend this book to anyone new to the area of criminology, but it may be of interest as perhaps an example of the approach to criminology taken by clinicians of earlier generations.