Dr Alfred Adler in Wales

For those of you who thought that juvenile delinquency was invented by Snoop Dogg or James Dean, think again. Exactly 70 years ago today the great psychoanalyst Alfred Adler delivered a lecture on The Problem of Juvenile Delinquency to a packed audience at University College, Cardiff.

Famed for his work on the inferiority complex, superiority complex and the concept of masculine protest, Dr Adler said what everybody else has been saying ever since and blamed the parents. Bad and over-indulgent parenting, he reckoned, were responsible for the revolt of youth.

According to Adler the delinquent lives in a dream world where he/she is the centre of admiration. Periods of idleness or feelings of inferiority can turn an otherwise normal adolescent into a delinquent with nothing better to look forward to than a life of crime.

The esteemed Viennese psychoanalyst arrived for the lecture in Cardiff by train, presumably to avoid the possibility of having his motor nicked by dysfunctional teenagers.