Sharing backgrounds of extreme poverty and ghetto life, each had committed virtually the same series of increasingly serious infractions of the law that eventually led to arrest and incarceration in a State facility. Despite the similarities of their sociocultural context, with its attendant stresses, each of these boys had in an individual and unique way encountered problems in dealing with significant others in his life during particular stages of development. In the first case, the boy's world resembled that of an infant with a tremendous need to feel a primary attachment. In contrast, the second case was focused on establishing and reinforcing a masculine identity. In the third case, the major motivation for delinquent acts was an all-driving narcissistic need for attention and recognition. In all three cases, a disturbance in the mother-son relationship and the absence of a father in the family unit contributed to an ambivalent bond to the mother, masculinity-femininity conflict, and low self-esteem which, in turn, gave rise to inflexible personality structures, repetition of self-defeating behavior patterns, and aggressive and antisocial behaviors. Author and subject indexes, 2 appendixes, and 61 references.