Vandalism has existed throughout human history as a sacrificial act of destruction. In the modern world of business and material goods, destruction is a major transgression of the world of things, the violation of a taboo which allows the vandalous individual to express what cannot be said. Underlying this interpretation is the theory of gifts: giving gains the recognition of another individual and requires an even more impressive reciprocal gift. Often such exchanges are accompanied by sacrificial destruction of the goods exchanged. Furthermore, feasts and carnivals of all kinds are frequently accompanied by ritual destruction. Thus, as the authors observed in a home for juveniles at risk aged 3 to 21 years, deprived children rejected by their families are likely to destroy precious objects at parties where they strongly sense rejection by the normal world. The fundamental human impulse to destroy is connected to exchange among individuals and groups. The gift is the basis for value, and value is the vehicle for all exchange. Exchange, in turn, defines the value of the self. Acts of vandalism are thus expressions of feelings of personal or collective rejection. Such acts are a symptom of social psychopathology and of a breakdown of fundamental human communication. Vandalism to telephone booths, cars, and schools are problems of society where the individual has disappeared into the mercantile collectivization of exchange. Movement away from overemphasis of consumption in all phases of society, not better alarm systems, is the appropriate response to vandalism.