[Psychodynamic Explanations] Psychological Explanations Of Offending Behaviour Flashcards
What does Freud’s personality tripartite consist of?
Id, ego, superego.
What is the id?
Pleasure principle.
What is the ego?
Reality principle.
What is the superego?
Morality principle.
What part of the personality decides between right and wrong, making it crucial in explaining criminality?
Superego.
What did Blackburn (1993) say about the psychodynamic explanation for offending behaviour?
If the superego is deficient, then criminality is inevitable, as the id isn’t properly controlled (we give into our impulses).
What are the three types of superego?
-Weak superego.
-Deviant superego.
-Harsh superego.
What is weak superego?
Same-sex parent is absent during the phallic stage, so child does not internalise a fully-formed superego (there is no parent to successfully identify with).
What is deviant superego?
A child may be raised by an offending parent, so the superego internalises deviant behaviour.
What is harsh superego?
Parents are overly harsh (focused on punishment), leading to guilt and an unconscious drive to commit crime in order to be punished.
What is Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation (in the context of psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour)?
If an infant is deprived of a warm, continuous mother figure during the critical period of attachment, then affectionless psychopathology will develop.
What are the characteristics of an affectionless psychopath?
-Inability to show affection.
-Lack of empathy.
-Little remorse.
How does Bowlby’s 44 thieves study support psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour?
Reported that 32% of a group of juvenile delinquents have shown affectionless psychopathology, compared to 0% of non-delinquents.
Evaluation points for psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour:
-Suggests that girls have weaker superegos than boys, as they are under less pressure to identify with the same-sex parent due to a lack of castration anxiety. However, males show more criminal behaviour than females, which contradicts the prediction of the inadequate superego explanation.
-There is little evidence that children raised without a same-sex parent are more likely to go on to offend, weakening the inadequate superego explanation. Also, if children have been raised by a deviant parent then go on to commit crime, this could be due to genetic inheritance rather than superego formation, a concept which is almost impossible to test scientifically.
