not, or cannot, keep; and other
individuals who feel themselves deeply wronged go away with an
additional sense of those wrongs having been underestimated and of
having received no redress. The results are written in
discouragement and in repeated failures to live in harmony, each of
which makes a permanent solution more and more difficult. The case
worker to whom the results of the externally imposed reconciliation
come back again and again has reason to be confirmed in a distrust
of short-cut methods."[36]

* * * * *

A probation officer writes: "Superficial reconciliations invariably
result unsatisfactorily. In one case a reconciliation was effected
before the husband was released on probation. This was done
apparently in the hope that it would influence the court in the
disposition of the case. After a study of the situation had been
made by the probation officer, it was found that the wife was
totally incompetent as a housekeeper, that she possessed an
antagonistic disposition, had a violent temper, and that no sincere
attachment for each other existed between the couple. Before any
constructive measures could be carried out by the probation officer
to remedy this situation they separated, and it was not possible
thereafter to adjust the differences with any degree of
satisfaction.

"On another occasion a man who had a previous prison record and had
displayed criminal tendencies was arrested for desertion. His wife,
a feeble-minded woman with one child, was being maintained at a
private institution at county expense. Through the efforts of the
district attorney a reconciliation was effected before the case was
disposed of in court, and the man was placed on probation upon the
recommendation of the prosecutor without the usual preliminary
investigation by the probation department. The couple began to live
together contrary to the advice of the probation officer. About two
months later the man was arrested for committing a series of
burglaries and the woman was found to be pregnant. Efforts which had
been made by the probation department to determine her mentality
disclosed her to be feeble-minded; later she was committed to a
custodial institution for feeble-minded women of child-bearing age.
The man was committed to a state prison."

How