Studies in Deviant Behaviours in Hungary [antikvár]

PATAKI, Ferenc PREFACE In Hungary nowadays the "total amount;' of deviant forms of behaviour is unbearably high and the increase since the beginning of the sixties has seemed limitless. From this two basic questions follow: what is the reason for this development? and, how could this alarming rate of increase be slowed down, then stopped and fmally reversed? The present state of research addresses these questions with well-established methods or merely with hypothetical suppositions and explanations which themselves present new dilemmas. It might well be that newer questions are sometimes more fruitful than these short and restrictive answers. There is hardly any other area where a humble and examining mind is needed more than here. The deviant act and the deviant personality can never be explained by only one reason and explanatory principle: these phenomena are explained by a variety of factors. They are rooted both in the autobiographical history of a personal life and in the tradition, cultural models, collective experiences, and the current state and prospects of a national society. Deviant acts always come into being at a specific point of intersection between a personality and social dynamic. The deviation producing processes of a society somehow always reach or "select" those personal Uves that are subject to the temptation of deviance, that are unprotected from its lure for a number of cultural and/or personal factors. We may also learn more about deviation itself if we examine more systematically the factors of a personality's resistance. Surely everybody has been tempted by the thought of suicide at least once. But we know very little about when, and tmder what conditions, the vague thought becomes an act, as well as when this might change into conscious resistance. This is also one of the new ways of asking a question. And there is a lot to think about here. There are times when facts are not straightforward either. The stark and clearly outlined acts of deviation are surrounded by other acts which fall into a vague and uncertain category. For instance, is anyone able to precisely classify professional pornography, prostitution or different sorts of sexual aberration? Do these acts promote social integration, "public health" in the broad sense of the term, or do they destroy it? Who could possibly argue that divorce as an individual act is not an important manifestation of personal freedom? On the other hand in a society like ours where forty out of one hundred marriages end in divorce this is no longer a collection of individual acts, rather a social tendency in the evaluation of which we have to use other measures as well. The inactivity of our thinking leads us to mistakenly simplify complex relations and connections, give one-dimensional explanations to phenomena and unintentionally group together what are in fact inrelated actions. However, it is sufficient to think for a moment of the numerous individual versions - reasons and motives - suicide can have; of the various faces of criminality (from the professional criminal to the casual offender); and how many different roads can lead to alcoholism or drug addiction. Because apart from the mere concept of the act what can the common element be in the suicide of a teenager because of love and the voluntary euthanasia of an old person suffering from cancer? Or between a satanic mittder and an act which is part of a blood feud? Not to mention a pathetic swindler and a violent burglar. Each of these people's acts can only