Psychodynamic explanations for offending

Question 1

A01

Outline the Inadequate Superego-Blackburn

Answer 1

• The superego works on the morality principle,
• • The superego punishes the ego with feelings of guilt for fault and rewards it with feelings of pride and satisfaction for good, moral behaviours
    Blackburn (1993) argued that if the superego is inadequate or deficient, then the Id would have free-rein & not be controlled enough
    He suggested three types of inadequate superego:

Question 2

A01

Outline the 3 types of inadequate superego’s identified by Blackburn

Answer 2

The weak superego
The deviant superego
The overly harsh Superego

Question 3

A01

Outline the weak superego role in explaining offending behaviour

Answer 3

If the same-sex parent is absent during the phallic stage, then internalisation of a fully-formed superego cannot happen and the child misses out on internalisation. This would leave more opportunity for immoral or offending behaviour

Question 4

A01

Outline the deviant superego role in explaining offending behaviour

Answer 4

If the child internalises the immoral or deviant values from the same-sex parent then offending is more likely. For example, a child raised by a criminal parent of the same sex is not likely to associate guilt with wrong-doing

Question 5

A01

Outline the overly harsh superegos role in explaining offending behaviour

Answer 5

If a child is punished too harshly by their same-sex parent, then the child will grow to be crippled with guilt, which leads to anxiety. This, on an unconscious level, will cause the child to rebel and be driven to commit acts that satisfy the need for punishment

Question 6

A01

Outline Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Answer 6

• Bowlby (1944) stated in his maternal deprivation hypothesis (MDH) that failure to build a strong relationship with a mother-figure would result in damaging and irreversible consequences later in life
• He suggest that one major impact of maternal deprivation was a development of the affectionless psychopathy personality type, which is characterised by a lack of guilt, lack of empathy and a desire to engage in acts of delinquency
• Bowlby’s 44 juvenile thieves study supports his own claims with the MDH, finding that 14/ 44 thieves he sampled showed behavioural and personality characteristics that could be classed as affectionless psychopathy, with 12 of the boys in the sample having experienced prolonged maternal separation in early childhood

Question 7

A03

Questionable evidence for theory-lacks scientific evidence

Limitation

Answer 7

The psychodynamic explanations of offending have been criticised for lacking scientific evidence
The vague and complex nature of features such as the unconscious, and the heavy reliance on retrospective data, makes many aspects of psychodynamic explanation untestable, thus decreases the reliability of its suggestions through lack of robust scientific evidence

Question 8

A03

Poor predictive power-lewis

limitation

Answer 8

Lewis (1954) found that, after analysing interview from 500 young people, maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of whether they offended later in life
They suggested that plenty of other variables could have been the cause of criminal behaviour, and raised the possibility that maternal deprivation may even occur as a result of growing up in poverty, which would question the validity of Bowlby’s theory