Juvenile delinquency and transgressions occur at all times in various social formations. The task of psychoanalytic pedagogy is to find an appropriate understanding of the life situation of young people, which enables adequate educational responses far removed from exaggerated punitive needs, negligent oversight, and context-free individual addressing. Social upheavals significantly contribute to the failure of necessary socialization efforts.

In this context, the authors demonstrate how important it is to understand the phenomenon of youth delinquency in pedagogy as a socially conditioned problem intertwined with individual conflicts, which can reach deep into the psychosocial integrity due to biography and socialization history. Therefore, the prerequisite for shaping educational relationships is to consider the inner conflict, the structural peculiarities of personality development, attachment experiences, and possible traumatizations along with their corresponding consequences.

With contributions from Bernd Ahrbeck, Wilfried Datler, Mischa Engelbracht, Ulrike Fickler-Stang, Rebecca Friedmann, Andreas Hamburger, Helmwart Hierdeis, Dieter Katzenbach, Peter Möhring, Tilmann Moser, Hans-Joachim Plewig, Winnie Plha, Michaela Stiepel, Achim Würker, and David Zimmermann.