From crises including two World Wars and the Great Depression, the United States emerged in the 1950s as an unprecedented global power, intent on peace, and energized by remarkable prosperity. But new threats to domestic tranquility quickly arose in the immediate postwar period. Racial tensions ran high, Communist plots against the government were being routed out, and perhaps most shockingly the youth turned against society, violently so. Headlines abounded declaring that the youth were now a dangerous social problem. Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without A Cause" took an unconventional look at juvenile delinquency, one that located the problem in what had once been the peaceful suburbs. This project examines the immediate reception of this enduring depiction of teenage alienation, using sources that situate the film in its historical context.

 Lukas, Edwin. “Adolescents in Wartime,” review of Rebel without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath by Robert M. Lindner,  Annals of the American Academy of     Political and Social Science,  November, 1944. 

            This is a review of Robert Lindner’s psychoanalysis of a juvenile delinquent, entitled Rebel Without a Cause. Edwin Lukas highlights the revelatory and pioneering nature of the work before him, from Lindner’s method, the rarely employed technique of “hypno-analysis,” to his Freudian analysis of his subject, “Harold.” Rebel Without a Cause is especially groundbreaking, according to Lukas, because it seeks to connect the delinquent behavior of youths, like Harold, with their mental turmoil. As others focused on the manifestations of delinquency, Lindner had successfully found its causes: in the dysfunction of Harold’s family, his homosexual inclinations, and in the impoverished environment in which he came of age. Furthermore, Harold’s ability to eventually understand why he engages in criminal and violent behaviors was seen as a sign that juvenile delinquents could be reached, and perhaps saved from themselves and society. The reviewer finds optimism in Harold’s progress, although the book does not state that Harold is “cured” of his anti-social behaviors. Lukas hopes the book will serve as an example to the callous court system which does not emphasize rehabilitation, and demonstrating the new primacy of its content, Lukas concludes that “this book is a necessity for sociologists, psychiatrists, criminologists, and others concerned with criminals.” (216)

            While Robert Lindner and his most famous work offered little more than the title to the film of the same name, this review demonstrates the seriousness with which the problem of juvenile delinquency was considered. The praise and endorsement Edwin Lukas offers to Lindner on the basis of his finding a cause, rather than examining the symptoms of delinquency, are indicative of a shift in the study of problem youth as well as in attitudes towards the burgeoning field of psychology.

 

Having published “Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath” a decade earlier, Robert Lindner served as one of the nation’s preeminent scholars on juvenile delinquency, a trend that baffled and terrified the nation. Interviewed by Time in 1954, he recounted a laundry list of gory crimes committed by the teenaged, what he termed “a devil's rosary of crimes ranging from rape to murder, and all stamped with an unbelievable degree of sadism."  One of the causes of this spike in violence was the advent of a mass youth culture, according to Lindner. While others tried to combat the problem by taking away comic books, turning off the television, separating teenagers from their friends, and spending more time with their children, Lindner notes that these methods are largely futile. More than that, what was required of the older generation was an understanding of their child’s warped psychiatric condition which caused them to act out. The new mass culture, had the effect of weakening one’s conscience, creativity, and sense of self, and replacing it with a cold, and potentially violent member of the mob. As conformity with the mob caused the loss of personal identity, it created a wave of rebels without causes and without restraint. The only answer offered is in Lindner’s advocacy for psychological therapy.

                Articles on juvenile delinquency pervaded publications in the 1950s, and Lindner’s interview with Time reflects the extreme crisis of the situation the media aid in creating. Lindner predicted that the conscienceless perpetrators of juvenile crime were part of an epidemic that would become worse before it got better, if it did. While supplying colorful and dramatic descriptions of crime and history,  he offers remarkably few solutions or examples of positive progress. The piece is prime example of the hysteria and paranoia that permeated the time.