7.6 Forensics - The Psychological Explanation: Psychodynamic Explanation

Question 1

The ID

Answer 1

Present from birth. Responsible for pleasure seeking behaviours, willing to go to any extent to get this pleasure

Question 2

EGO

Answer 2

Develops age 2. Rational part of the mind and balances the demands of the ID and Super Ego working on the reality principle

Question 3

Superego

Answer 3

Develops age 4. Responsible for being moral and administers guilt working on the morality principle. This is usually learnt via parents, rules or societal demands

Question 4

The inadequate superego

Answer 4

Can be inadequate in three ways. It rewards the ego for good and punishes it for wrong doing

Question 5

The weak superego

Answer 5

Same sex parent absent during the phallic stage so child is unable to internalize a fully-formed super ego as identifications fails to take place. Makes immoral or criminal behavior more likely as the ID takes over

Question 6

The deviant superego

Answer 6

Internalised superego has immoral or deviant values leading to offending behavior e.g. a person raised with criminal parents is not likely to associate with guilt and wrongdoing

Question 7

The Overly-harsh Superego

Answer 7

Crippling guilt and anxiety, this may unconsciously drive individual to perform criminal acts to satisfy their need for punishment

Question 8

Bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory

Answer 8

Under this explanation Bowlby argued that since a mother needs a continuous loving relationship with a child within the 30 month critical period, a disruption would lead to affectionless psychopathy.

Question 9

Strengths of the Psychodynamic Explanation of Crime

Answer 9

• Ressler et al (1988) found out of 36 male murderers in the USA, 42% were sexually abused as a kid. This supports the idea of a deviant superego with the super ego being adopted during this trauma.
• Dietz and Warren (1995) found 76% of 41 serial rapists were abused as a child, supporting the idea of having a deviant superego

Question 10

Limitations of the Psychodynamic Explanation of Crime

Answer 10

• Reductionist, oversimplifies behavior down to deviant superegos for example in Russler et al
• Determinist as it argues behavior is down to role models which is out of a person’s control
• Androcentric and ethnocentric so ungeneralizable
• Unscientific as it’s based on unconscious concepts that cannot be measured so no established cause and effect
• Unfalsifiable as explanation is based on subjective beliefs
• Bowlby is the only instance of supporting evidence but this has been proven wrong e.g. with the Kuluchova twins, who failed to form an attachment for 7 years yet once adopted achieved excellence
• Freud argued girls have a weaker superego due to less pressure to identify, showing alpha bias so less reliable
• Implies males more likely to commit crimes so socially sensitive