Patterns of aggression, psychopathology and family environment among juvenile delinquent and non-criminal adolescents

INTRODUCTION "We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, which means neglecting the foundation of life. Many of things we need can wait, the child cannot, right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him, we cannot answer 'tomorrow'. His name is 'today'." The above lines quoted by Nobel laureate Gabriel Mistral (cited in Kalita, 2013) is a magnificent comment on the development of children and adolescents. Adolescence is a period of rapid physiological as well as psychological transformation. Over the life course, it is characterized by a transition phase in which the individual is neither a child nor an adult. The adolescent strives to move towards acquiring independence. The flux and negotiation inherent in this developmental process increases the potential for both internal and external conflict. The importance of the period of adolescence has been recognized in the context of all the biological, psychological and socio-cultural factors. According to Hall (1916), the adolescent moves between the exhibitions of several personality traits including exquisite sensitivity and tenderness to callousness and cruelty. There is enthusiastic curiosity, and the urge to discover and explore. Freud (1925) believed that adolescence is a universal phenomenon and includes behavioural, social and emotional changes which influence his self-image. According to him, during the genital phase, the child is engrossed in the instinctual impulses which disrupt the balance between id and ego. The ego is tugged between the impulses of id and restrictions imposed by the superego. This conflict makes adolescence a time of tremendous stress and turmoil. Piaget (1947) described adolescence as a decisive turning point at which the individual rejects, or at least revises his estimate of everything that has been infused in him, and acquires a personal point of view and a personal place in life. During adolescence, the time perspective expands, and past and future assume greater,