A young man had been making up to her,
and later she confided that this given period was one of great
turmoil because of the renewed arousal of many ideas about sex
affairs. After this there was still more attempts to win Edna's
confidence about her daily experiences, including such as the
above. There has been the gradual development of character, and
Edna is now, two years after she was taken from her bad
environment, only very occasionally guilty of falsifying, and she
is otherwise trustworthy.
Our study of the causative factors of this girl's delinquency and
particularly of her extraordinary lying led us to see that
perhaps all of the following have a part: (a) Heredity. Father
unknown. Mother a free-living woman. (b) Home conditions.
Mental and moral bad influences in the home life on account of
the foster mother conniving at stealing and being herself an
extreme liar. (c) Psychic contagion from the atmosphere of lies
in which the girl has been brought up. (d) Mental conflict
arising from the suspicion of her parentage, early acquaintance
with sex knowledge, and the irregular morale of her home life.
(e) Bad companions, including her foster mother's friends, and
boys and girls.
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