The individual delinquent: a text-book of diagnosis and prognosis fort all concerned in understanding offenders

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1915. FIRST EDITION. With 10 full-page plates and numerous text diagrams. Bound in publisher’s green cloth; 1 leaf loose and small tear to another leaf. Small bookstore label to front paste-down. Overall an excellent copy. First edition of this seminal work on the study of juvenile delinquency by pioneering psychiatrist and criminologist William Healy (1869-1963). Healy was an early advocate of the separation of child and adult offenders. The individual delinquent offered a new methodology in addressing juvenile delinquency, criminology, and child psychiatry in general. It is divided into basically two sections, the first on methods and the second on results. Healey’s work emphasized the “multifactor theory” of delinquency, addressing the influence of environmental factors on child delinquents, away from the contemporary European model of the primacy of genetic factors. However he does acknowledge that social, medical and psychological concerns must be addressed in understanding each case history. An interesting piece of the ongoing nature versus nurture debate.

Healy was one of the ofunders and the first president of the American Orthopsychiatric Association and helped introduce Freudian through into America.

Snodgrass, “William Healy (1869-1963): Pioneer child psychiatrist and criminologist,” Jl. History of Behavioral Sciences, Oct. 20 (4) 1984, pp. 332-339; Stevens, “Individual delinquent,” Jl. Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 6, No. 6, 1916.