himself and others believe he wouldn’t have it if he could. The reason he has no love object is that none are worth having; thus he defends his inferiority. Also he undermines any criticism from others by showing up the inferiority of the source. He is protected by having already discredited the other person. Moreover, there is a sense of power and superiority in being able to criticize everything, so it offers a natural compensation for the inferiority from which the critical or cynical person suffers. Not having admirable loving parents one must remember is a source of tremendous inferiority. A child of eight has no intelligent weapons with which to combat a hostile family situation. It has no chance against the egoism of the adults around it. All it can do is to react blindly in ways that offer some temporary solace. Stealing from the stepmother is a way of satisfying the needs to fight with or injure or destroy the pain-giving stimulus. It gives the child a tremendous sense of power and victory. Here is something which he can do secretly and effectively. It really hurts the hateful object and it supplies pleasure-giving stimuli, such as candy, which are otherwise denied.... Ruth ... was so absorbed in the injuries done her by life that she thought of nothing but pleasure compensations. She would face nothing that demanded effort or any unpleasantness. She had a right to take things because life owed her reparation. She saw nothing in school or work, or the ordinary habits of daily hygiene but hardship to be avoided. She wanted nice clothes and felt she had a right to take them, but she saw no reason why she should take any care of them. If a garment was torn or dirty, get a new one. She thought she ought to be placed where there were servants so she would have no housework and no laundry to attend to. She had no loyalty to any one. She played one person against another and used everything to her own advantage as she saw it. As soon as an effort was made to give her insight she reacted to protect herself from the painful revelations by criticizing the worker and taking the attitude that there was a game going on between her and the worker in which each was trying to get ahead of the other. She could not believe in disinterested effort on her behalf. Ruth was turned over to a child-placing agency with the foregoing interpretation of her behavior and suggestions for working on the problem, but with great doubt as to the outcome. She was to be given as much gratification of her pleasure wants as possible in order to reduce the struggle to satisfy them and leave some of her energy and interest free to be developed along other lines. She was to be placed with a really superior person whom she might finally come to respect as genuine and her best chance would be to find some one person, the worker or the foster mother, who had real faith in her possibilities.