Psychodynamic Explantion A03

Question 1

Research support - strength - miroslav Goleta 1991

Answer 1

• conducted a Freudian-style analysis of ten offenders referred for psychiatric treatment. In all those assessed, disturbances in Superego formation were diagnosed.
• Each offender experienced unconscious feelings of guilt and the need for self-punishment.
• Goreta explained this as a consequence of an over-harsh Superego, the need for punishment manifesting itself as a desire to commit acts of wrongdoing and offend
• This evidence seems to support the role of psychic conflicts and an over-harsh Superego as a basis for offending

Question 2

Counterpoint

Answer 2

Parents who rely on harsher forms of discipline tend to raise children who are rebellious and rarely express feelings of guilt or self-criticism (Kochanska et al. 2001).
This calls into question the relationship between a strong, punitive internal parent and excessive feelings of guilt within the child.

Question 3

Gender bias - limitation of Freudian theory

Answer 3

• An implicit assumption within Freud’s theory is that girls develop a weaker Superego than boys because identification with the same-gender parent is not as strong.
• This is because girls do not experience the intense emotion associated with castration anxiety, and therefore are under less pressure to identity with their mothers (than boys are with their fathers). Therefore, according to Freud, their Superego (and consequently their sense of morality) is less fully realised.
• The implication of this is that women should be more prone to offending behaviour than men. Rates of imprisonment show that the opposite is more likely to be true (in the UK about 20 times more men are in prison than women). In a study where children were required to resist temptation, Martin Hoffman (1975) found hardly any evidence of gender differences, and when there was, little girls tended to be more moral than little boys.
• This suggests there is alpha bias at the heart of Freud’s theory and means it may not be appropriate as an explanation of offending behaviour.

Question 4

Other factors - limitation - Hilda Lewis

Answer 4

• analysed data drawn from interviews with 500 young people and found that maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of future offending and the ability to form close relationships in adolescence. Even if there is a link between children who have experienced frequent or prolonged separation from their mothers and offending in later life, this is not necessarily a causal relationship.
• There are countless other reasons for this apparent link, for example the maternal deprivation may be due to growing up in poverty - and this might then explain later offending.
• This suggests that maternal deprivation may be one of the reasons for later offending behaviour, but not the only reason.