psychodynamic explanation Flashcards
AO1
Focus is on the role of the parent-child relationship in developing the personality of a criminal adult and the unconscious mental processes that lead to criminal behaviour.
Superego explanation
The super ego is seen as the “morality principle” it attempts to regulate behaviour by giving feelings of guilt and pride as rewards and punishment. It develops as part of the phallic psychosexual stage of development. The child resolves the Oedipus/ Electra complex identifying with same sex parent and imitating their behaviour.
Weak superego: Because of a lack of identification with the same sex parent, for example if they are absent, the superego is not able to fully form and control the id by providing the rewards and punishments needed for moral behaviour.
Over-harsh superego: Overly strict parenting and over identification produces an excessively dominant and punishing superego. The need to justify these extreme feelings of guilt lead to the person carrying out criminal behaviours.
Deviant superego: The same sex parent is identified with normally, however because the parent is a criminal, the behaviours that are imitated are criminal and the superego does not have the sense of morality shared by society.
defence mechanisms
Defence mechanisms are unconscious mental processes that are used to avoid the ego experiencing feelings of anxiety from unacceptable thoughts/stimuli.
Denial: The criminal rejects the reality or serious nature of their crimes. “I didn’t really hurt him badly, he was just playing up so I would get into trouble”.
Displacement: Violent criminals feel anger towards a target they cant express that anger to. So they release their anger on weaker targets. E.G. a man who is angry at his boss at work, but releases that anger by assaulting his wife and children at home.
Rationalisation: The criminal finds a away to argue that their crime is “justified” in some way. “They clearly don’t care if I break in and take stuff, they left the door unlocked!”
Attachment theory
Bowlby’s theories were based on his psychodynamic background combined with an understanding of cognitive and evolutionary ideas. Attachment theory suggests a poor quality infant-caregiver relationship results in criminal behaviour.
Our first relationship with our mother acts as an internal working model for our future relationships. Children with an insecure attachment style expect other people cant be trusted, this negatively influences their later interactions with people.
Extreme levels of maternal deprivation can result in affectionless psychopathy, a lack of empathy for others or feelings of guilt for your own actions. Bowlby linked this personality type to high levels of delinquency in young boys in his 44 thieves study
limitation
Bowlby’s work suggests a connection between antisocial behaviour in children and
poor parenting, but this cant be seen as scientific evidence for a poorly developed superego leading to delinquency. Many Freudian concepts like the superego are not directly observable or falsifiable, meaning as an explanation of offending behaviour it cant be empirically tested so will always be an unscientific explanation.
strength
Theories on the link between early childhood experience and later criminality can be applied to reduce crime. Freud’s ideas can be used to ensure children’s superego is not under or over developed with parenting classes. In adoption care should be taken not to give the child a deviant same sex parent to identify with. Bowlby’s ideas have been accepted and care is now taken to reduce maternal deprivation.
Limitation
Freud’s suggests that as females don’t resolve the Oedipus complex they should have weaker superegos, and less moral. This is an example of alpha bias and likely due to Freud’s own androcentric world view. Offending data clearly shows across cultures females are less likely to be offenders than males, a direct counter to Freud’s theory.
Limitation
Evidence for early childhood experience and later criminal behaviour like Bowlby’s 44 thieves is correlational. Cause and effect cant be established so criminal behaviour may due be other factors. There is a range of evidence for alternative explanations for offending behaviour such as social learning processes and genetic origins.
