Psy Explanation- Psychodynamic Flashcards
The maternal deprivation theory which is a part of the psychodynamic approach is proposed by bowlby. He suggested that prolonged separations between a mother and child would have long term emotional consequences. But it will only have this effect if this happens before the age of 2 and if there is no substitute mother available. Bowlby felt there was a continuing risk up until 5 years of age. Bowlby suggested one consequence of separation is affectionless psychopathy which is a behaviour disorder in which the individual has no ability to experience shame of guilt and lacks a social conscience.
Explaining deviant behaviour: bowlby worked as a psychiatrist so he regularly worked with children who had been caught stealing as his patients. He observed that a number of these thieves had experienced early and frequent separations and also displayed signs of affection less psychopathy. Such characteristics allowed them to be thieves as they could steal from others as it didn’t matter to them.
To test this hypothesis bowlby compared 44 of the thieves attending his clinic to 44 control patients. He found that none of the controls experienced early separations whereas 39% of the thieves had experienced early separations.
He also found that those thieves with an affectionless character had almost all experienced frequent separations. 86% of he affectionless thieves compared with 17% of the other thieves.
The superego is a part of freuds conception of the structure of personality. The superego embodies our conscience and sense of right and wrong as well as notions of he ideal self it develops between ages 3 and 6.
Weak superego: if the same sex parent is not present during the phallic stage or the child does not identify with them a weak superego is developed. Therefore the person has little control over antisocial behaviour and is likely to offend and act in ways that gratify their ID impulses.
Overdeveloped superego: a child may develop a very strong identification with a parent. Consequences is excessive feelings of guilt and anxiety most of the time. The individual would commit a crime with a wish tonne caught and then the punishment would reduce their feelings of guilt.
Deviant superego: normal identification with the same sex parent. The child takes on the same moral attitudes of the parent. Children with criminal parent are at a greater risk of adopting deviant attitudes.
Another weakness of the psychodynamic approach is that it is a socially sensitive approach. Individuals are not seen as responsible for their own behaviour as the conflicts which lead them to offend are unconscious. This opposes the view of the legal system which believes that there is an element of free will and personal responsibility involved. If the legal system based its system in the psychodynamic approach it would be difficult to blame offenders for their behaviour as the behaviour that lead them to offend may have happened in the unconscious.
A weakness of freuds theory is the issues with gender bias. According to his theory women should develop a weaker superego than men as they don’t identify as strongly with their same sex parent as boys do. This is due partly due to the fact that the resolution of the Electra complex is less satisfactory and partly because Freud believed there was little reason for anyone to identify with a women due to their lower status. Such views display an alpha bias exaggerating the difference between men and women and devaluing women. If Freuds views were correct we would expect to see more women as criminals than men due to the weaker superego but this isn’t the case. This therefore means that freuds theory can not be generalised to everyone as he only looked at men and didn’t study women.
A weakness of the 44 thieves study bowlby conducted was that the study was a correlational
Study and so it cannot show a cause and effect relationship between separation and affectionless psychopathy. However separation was not manipulated. All the study showed was an association between separation and the emotional problems but there may have been other variables that caused the emotional problems. For example the role of the father and the child’s temperament. Another flaw of the study is the use of retrospective data. This is unreliable as it may be distorted or forgotten and the info collected cannot be checked. This therefore questions the reliability of the study.
A strength of the maternal deprivation theory is that bowlby concluded from his research that the findings had implications for prevention of delinquency. Treatment of emotional problems in young delinquents is slow and difficult so bowlby suggested to prevent early separations in the first place. He demonstrated that the key was emotional separation rather than just physical. They showed that children coped reasonably well with separations from parents as long as alternative emotional care was provided. Knowing about the implications of separation is advantageous as it can help change child rearing practices to make sure that children aren’t without any emotional care for long periods of time
