The Malevolent Transformation

Abstract

The author is Director of the Mental Health Consultation Services of the Educational Alliance, in New York City. He also serves as a Consultant to the New York Community Mental Health Board and is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Social Work of New York University. Dr. Chwast, in addition, is Secretary of the American Society of Criminology, serves as a therapist on the staff of the Association for the Psychiatric Treatment of Offenders, and is Supervisor in the Department of Community Mental Health of the Postgraduate Center for Psychotherapy. He formerly acted as a consultant to the Mayor's Committee on Auxiliary Services to the Courts of New York City, the Intergroup Relations Project of the Research Center of the New York School of Social Work, and the Community Service Society. He was also formerly the Supervising Psychologist and Director of Planning and Training of the Juvenile Aid Bureau of the New York City Police Department. The describes what some have felt to be a psychodynamic event which occurs in the early lives of emotionally deprived children and results in anti-social patterns of behavior. Is there evidence supporting the existence of the malevolent transformation? If it does occur, at what ages is it manifest? What is the course of its development? And what hopes are there for its arrest or correction? In the following article, the author reports upon a study of 30 predelinquent boys and 30 matched non-predelinquents, in which study the author considers evidence of the transformation to have been uncovered. He discusses the theory of the malevolent transformation and compares the theory with his findings.-EDITOR.