psychological explanations: psychodynamic Flashcards
Explain the inadequate superego in the psychodynamic explanations of offending.
Ronald Blackburn argued that if the superego is somehow deficient or inadequate then offending behaviour is inevitable because the id is given free rain and not properly controlled.
What are the three types of inadequate superego?
Weak superego- If the same-gender parent is absent during the phallic stage, a child cannot internalise a fully-formed superego as there is no opportunity for identification. This would make offending behaviour more likely.
Deviant superego- If the superego a child internalises has immoral or deviant values this would lead to offending behaviour.
The over harsh superego- A healthy superego is based on identification with a parent who has firm rules but forgives transgressions. However an excessively harsh parenting style leads to a child with an over-harsh superego who is crippled by guilt and anxiety. This may drive the individual to commit criminal acts in order to satisfy the Superego’s need for punishment.
Explain the role of emotion in the inadequate superego.
The effect of an inadequate superego is to allow primitive, emotional demands to become uppermost in guiding moral behaviour.
This also means that lack of guilt is relevant to understanding offending behaviour, as in the case of maternal deprivation theory.
Explain maternal deprivation in the psychodynamic explanations of offending.
Bowlby argued that the ability of children to form meaningful attachments and relationships in adulthood was dependent on the child forming a continuous relationship with a mother-figure.
Failure to establish such a relationship during the first few years of life means a child is likely to experience a number of damaging and irreversible consequences in later life. -Such as affectionless psychopaths.
Explain Bowlby’s Juvenile thieves study on maternal deprivation.
He conducted interviews on 44 thieves and a control group of 44 non-thieves.
He found that 14 of the thieves were classified as affectionless psychopaths. Of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation during the critical period.
In the non-offender group he only found 2 had experienced early separation.
strength of the psychodynamic explanations of offending.
There is research support between offending and the superego.
Goreta conducted a Freudian style analysis of ten offenders referred for psychiatric treatment.
From those assesses, disturbances in superego formation were diagnosed. Each offender experienced unconscious feelings of guilt and the need for self-punishment.
Goreta explained this is 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 supports the role of psychic conflicts and an over-harsh superego as a basis of offending.
Explain on limitation of the psychodynamic explanations of offending. (gender bias)
An assumption of Freud’s theory is that girls develop a weaker superego, as their identification with their same gender parent is not as strong as boys.
The implication of this is that women should be more prone to offending than men. However in the Uk 20 times more men are in prison than women.
Hoffman found hardly any evidence of gender differences, and when there was, little girls tended to be more moral than little boys.
2nd limitation of the psychodynamic explanations of offending.
Bowlby’s theory is only based on association between maternal deprivation and offending.
Lewis analysed data from interviews of 500 young people and they found that maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of future offending ad the ability to form close relationships in adolescence.
This means that MD may be one reason why people offend but not the only reason.
