Medicine: Bringing Up Parents

When a child in an apparently normal family of good reputation develops such habits as setting fires, stealing, truancy, vandalism or sexual misconduct, the chances are that he was stimulated by his parents' unconscious approval. This is the conclusion set forth in the A.M. A. Jour nal by two psychiatrists, the Mayo Clinic's Dr. Adelaide M. Johnson and the University of California's Dr. Stanislaus A. Szurek, after a ten-year study. Their explanation: in such cases the parents have not been able to resolve their own antisocial impulses, so they cannot deal firmly with their children's. In fact, they get vicarious satisfaction...

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