Rebel Without a Cause: The Story of A Criminal Psychopath

by Robert Mitchell Lindner

Robert Lindner's 1944 classic Rebel Without a Cause follows the successful analysis and hypnosis of a criminal psychopath, Harold. In full transcriptions of their forty-six sessions, Lindner takes his patient into the depths and recesses of his childhood memories. Plumbing the free-associative monologues for clues to unlock the causes of Harold's criminal behavior, Lindner portrays a man cut off from himself and unable to attach himself to others.

Lindner reveals to Harold long-hidden incidents from his infancy and childhood that served to propel him toward a troubled and chaotic adulthood, full of armed robbery, break-ins and random sexual encounters. With care and diligence, patient and analyst begin to excavate events from Harold's childhood and reconstruct them as a foundation for analysis.

Heralded as a classic upon its publication, Rebel Without a Cause is the tale of a masterful analysis that is still relevant today, against the complex issues of sanity, rehabilitation, and crime that resonate in our legal system.

Genres: Psychology, Classics, Memoir, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1944

About the author

From publisher's blurb at blurb at front of The Fifty-Minute Hour:

DR. ROBERT LINDNER was a professor of psychology at Lehigh University and Chief of the Psychiatric-Psychological Division at the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa. A frequent contributor to numerous psychoanalytic and psychological journals and encyclopedias, Dr. Lindner was author of Rebel Without a Cause, Stone Walls and Men and Prescription for Rebellion.

Reviews

[Ksenia Anske · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can chew through the first 30 pages of dry academic writing (some of it outdated), inside lies a treasure, a transcript of therapy sessions with a psychopath that reads like a novel a la McCarthy and Hemingway and Steinbeck and Keyes. Only it's real. And hair-raising. And tragic.

[John Gentry · Rating 1 out of 5]

The ramblings of a hypnotized psychopath.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes you understand why psychopaths are really the way they are! If you ever wondered why criminals act this way, why they kill, this book will tell you why.

[Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book really is doomed to live in a secondary role for after after the devasting film version which of course rocketed the immortal James Dean into an untouchable super star of celluloid. The first of the 3 films, which are collectors musts, he made before his tragic death (suicide it is now believed)

Sorry but also in my untouchable collection of DVDs

[Bruce Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. I read this way too early in my adolescence the first time. I was shocked at the time but fascinated with abnormal psychology.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and impressive analysis.