In this essay “conditioning in the development and treatment of delinquents and criminals” is discussed through the fictional character, Bigger Thomas, the “Negro boy”, who, in the novel of Richard Wright, “Native Son,” commits two socially intolerable crimes. The essay was written in the mid-1960s and first presented in 1966 in a symposium organized by Ernest Poser, a disciple of Hans Eysenck, at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. Subsequently, with some minor modifications, it was presented again in 1969 at a private hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, and published in 1972 in volume 4 of the World Journal of Psychosynthesis (a volume of the journal that is currently virtually unavailable either in print or electronically).

Ban TA. Conditioning in the development of delinquents and criminals. World Journal of Psychosynthesis 1972; 4: 30-2.

Thomas A. Ban
November 21, 2013