International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

HYGIENE AND SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS 165 frequently we find ill-nourished, wasted, oligaemic, under-developed, rickety neurotic, dyscrasic, endocnnopathic and pre-tuberculous subjects among children who are criminals or have got into bad ways ; and it is equally well known often these subjects have bad habits and dangerous tendencies which encourage the growth of perversions and moral deterioration, even to the point of criminality which forms a vicious circle. Very often these children are in a state of pseudoabnormality (De Sanctis) from insufficient nourishment, auto-and hetero-intoxication, glandular insufficiency, various forms of nervous disturbance or anomalies of the lymphatic and sensorial systems, so that any training work must always be preceded by a through going attempt to improve their individual personality. It is equally well known that there are still other young people who are marked by some particular psycho-physical constitution or abnormality which gives rise to a more or less pronounced tendency to crime in general, a tendency that becomes concrete, more or less precociously and intensely, according to the general circumtances of the subject's environment or other biological conditions which may be favourable to the development of criminality. (1) Hence the necessity of remembering that, in the causal determination of the serious, precocious and persistent criminal phenomenon, we invariably find, even in minors, predisposing causal factors which are inherent to the particular structure of their individual personality, and preparatory and determining causal factors which are particularly inherent to toxic, traumatic, suggestive agents, etc., and to the special circumstances of the environment in general. This being admitted, it seems evident that the educational action of the cinema should begin by a sound and well thought out propaganda of hygienic rules, which will help to make these criminal and outcast children understand the danger of bad habits and the serious prejudice to their morality. This end may be easily attained by means of films which make a satisfactory propaganda of those hygienic rules which are most necessary for the attainment and maintenance of physical and psychic health, and which illustrate the different kinds of harm that result from the abuse of alcohol and toxins in general, from idleness and vagabondage, from the lack of a sound home education and of religious feeling, etc. In this way the educational cinema may help to form a sound hygienic and social conscience even in children of this type, by means of a documentation that should be as lively and convincing as possible. But in addition to this, the educational cinema can and should aim at a not less important work of education by means of visions and documentations which, by their pedagogic-moral content, may act directly on whatever may stand for the sensibility and moral conscience of these degenerate and criminal children. To this end, we think that the cinema may be largely used as an educational system based mainly on the highly important play of the reaction. No one, in fact, can have any doubt today on the importance of the modern psycho-analytical tendency of pedagogy in general (1) and emendative pedagogy in particular. It must be admitted that if many criminal tendencies, especially the more serious ones, are always due to an initial urge which is founded on a more or less serious predisposition to crime, joined to that particular morpho-physical psychology which we recorded above under the name of criminal constitution, they are also more or less strongly upheld and favoured by special psychological situations and particular ideo-affectional complexes which act by facilitating their realization ; which fact becomes of special importance in all those cases where exists a psychological state consequent on more or less remote reactions which strengthen or even sustain the particular dynamism of the various tendencies to crime consequent on a generic or specific predisposition to crime itself ; or where there are particular ideo-affectional complexes which favour the very persistence and gravity of the criminal phenomenon. In this connection, we need only recall the now generally admitted importance which certain obsessions have in the genesis of different forms of specifico-recidivate criminality, namely, pocket-picking, theft, fraud, sexual degeneration, etc., (2) to be convinced that a psycho-analytical pedagogic procedure applied through the educational cinema may be of considerable importance in the re-education of criminal children and those with evil tendencies. (1) B. Dl Tullio. La costituzione delinquenziale nella etiologia e terapia del delitto. (The Criminal Constitution in the Atiology and Therapy of crime). Anonima Romana Editoriale, Rome, 1929. (1) P. PFISTER. Pedagogia e Psico-analisi. (Pedagogy and Psychoanalysis). Ed. Stock, Rome. (2) B. Dl Tullio. Manuale di Antropologia e Psicologia criminale. (Manual of Criminal Anthropology and Psychology) cited.