We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that criminals serve as a reflection of our darker desires and societal norms that we both envy and condemn.
Karl A. Menninger's quote reflects on the complex relationship between society and crime, suggesting that criminals provide a contrasting figure against which we define our own values and morals. They embody the actions we may secretly envy, while simultaneously acting as a target for our judgment and punishment, highlighting our conflicted nature and fascination with rebellion against societal rules.
In practice
During a discussion on morality, one could use this quote to illustrate the complexities of human desires.
People repeat in adult life emotions they experience in childhood. Many of the people whom I spent the last 30 or 40 years treating at so much per minute wouldn't have needed any treatment at all if they had had the right care as children.
We have come to see that just as the child must learn to love wisely, so he must learn to hate expeditiously, to turn destructive tendencies away from himself toward enemies that actually threaten him rather than toward the friendly and the defenseless, the more usual victims of destructive energy.
Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
What's done to children, they will do to society.
Our lives are shaped by those who love us as well as those who refuse to love us.
I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.
Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry, clips the wings of commerce, and introduces misery and indigence in every shape.
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.
Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
It doesn't matter if you please the whole world and don't please Jesus. But if you please Jesus, it doesn't matter whom you displease.
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