Personality: Psychodynamic Theory Flashcards
Psychodynamic Theory as an explanation of crime
basics
ID
• The pleasure principal, instinctive impulses, takes what wants doesn’t care about morals, can be dominant meaning less moral
Ego
• meets the demands of the ego and the ID, balances out the needs of the id and ego, the reality principle
SUPER EGO
• moral principal, does things based on morals(what’s good / bad), can be dominant, weak or deviant (AKA copy your same sex parents morals)
Psychosexual stages
• phallic stage (the development of the superego) ( develop morals learn right/wrong behavior)
• oral stage(relationships governed by the ID)
• annal stage ( boundaries + organization + development of the ego)
• general and latencey stage ( overcome the Oedipus and electra complex and channel libido elsewhere)
Thanatos
• the death Instinct, negative emotions, aggression, destruction
Libido
• sexuality, sex drive etc. contained in the Eros (life Instinct)
mind as iceburg
• subconscious - no direct access, makes no sense, mainly ID
• preconscious - not aware of it but you could be, ego and super ego are present here
• conscious - what’s your aware of, the egos here
Defence mechanisms
• EG displacement (anger toward an object), projection (saying it’s someone else’s negative thoughts etc), denial (saying something won’t happen, when you don’t know it will)
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
ID
ID Traits
Impulsiveness, aggression, selfishness, egotistical, frustration, greed, want
Dominant ID:
Increasing the ID’s influence on the ego means that a person will be more likely to show ID traits such as: impulsiveness and aggression which could lead to violent crime such as assult
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
ego
EGO
• the ego develops because there needs to be a balance between the needs and demands of the ID and the super ego
• a poorly developed ego occurs when there is a little retention (no hold in poo when potty training) in the anal stage
• a poorly developed ego can cause criminal behaviour because the the poorer it is the more it will give in to the IDs aggressive impulses and therefore the more likely it is to commit crime
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
Super ego
Super ego
• the super ego develops in the Fallic stage
• typical traits of the super ego include morals sympathy and restraint
• having a weak super ego can cause aggression as it cares less about doing what’s morally correct so it will give into the IDs desiers quicker and more often
• having a deviant super ego which is when your same sex parents shows you behavior and morals
• then you base your morals on their morals and do as they do
• for example: if your Dad’s aggressive to get what he wants then you’re aggressive too
• a strong super ego can also cause criminal behaviour because it forces the morals onto everyone and everything, and will be very protective of its morals
• therefore they’ll attack anybody who does anything that is against its morals
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
Cathartic
Catharticism is where little amounts of aggression stops aggression building up and then causing an explosion of blind rage
so doing the small outbursts of aggression means that aggression does not build up
This allows for the IDS impulses of aggression to be met while the super ego doesn’t get upset due to attacking somebody
• and therefore does not cause an explosion of blind range causing possible assault which is a crime
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
evidence
+
feshback and singer 1971
Feshback and singer 1971 support the explenation that the psychodynamic approach causes criminal behavior
• they found that Adolescent and pre-addolescent boys at the Residential School were more aggressive they had a diet non-aggressive television programs than if they had watched aggressive television programs
• this is because watching the aggressive television programs was cathartic and therefore discharged the pent up aggressive feelings
Where is watching the non-violent TV programs led to the ID sending more aggressive impulses to the ego which then builds up and eventually would lead to an explosion of aggression causing violence and perhaps even crime such as assault
Therefore meaning that this study supports the explanation that psychodynamic Theory causes criminal behavior
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
how good is research -
feshback and singer 1971
correlational
feshback and singer 1971
This study is poor evidence to support the explanation that psychodynamic Theory causes criminal behavior as
• the research is correlational and therefore can only find a relationship between the violence of TV (catharticism) and aggression
• however they cannot find cause and effect between them therefore meaning that the study has low internal validity
• and this means that feshack and singer 1971 is poor evidence to support the explanation that psychodynamic Theory causes criminal behaviour
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory compared to SLT
Bandura 1961
feshback and singer
+ reductionist - internal validity correlational
Social learning theories worse than Pychdynamic Theory as a explanation of criminal behaviour as Psychodynamic considers both nature and nurture in terms of Personality whereas SLT only considers nurture in its explenation
• therefore social learning theory is more reductionist as it does not consider nature Factors in its explanation of criminal behaviour, meaning it’s more spimplistic and therefore could not explain nature factors influencing criminal behaviors such as the Id in the subcontious
• so Psychodynamic is a better explenation of criminal behaviour than SLT interms of reductionism
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• Social Theory is better than Psychodynamic Theory as social learning theory has lab studies such as bandura 1961
Comparing this to Feshback and singer 1971 which is a correlational study
• lab studies can find cause and effect unlike correlations which cannot do this and only can find a relationship between two variables not that one variable causes the other variable to occur
• Therefore due to lab study such as bandora 1961 being able to establish cause and effects while study such as feshback and singer 1971 are correlational and cannot do this,
• lab studies Therefore have high internal validity, meaning better research to support their Theory
• meaning that social learning theory is the better explanation of criminal behavior due to having better research to support it
Personality: Psychodynamic Theory
Conclusion + ap
In conclusion the psychodynamic Theory is a extremely limited explanation of criminal behaviour due to it having a insufficient amount of evidence supporting it and the fact that due to the nature of the Theory involving subconscious elements it means that the theory cannot be falsified this means that it’s incredibly difficult to both prove correct and prove wrong as research cannot be done on it effectively
Making psychodynamic theorem extremely limited explanation of criminal behaviour
aplication
Catharsis
This can be done with offenders to decrease their aggressive impulses and their full decreasing the chance that they will do crime for example giving them violent video games to play so they can have little bursts of violence without aggression building up and exploding them to commit more crime
