While Freud didn’t have a detailed theory of the criminal, many later psychodynamic
theorists applied his ideas to crime. And yes, as you can probably guess, it’s about
how your early childhood relationships with your parents are messing you up for life!
I imagine you have a basic idea of psychodynamics already, I’m going to cover everything you
need here for its link to offending behaviour, but there are a lot of weird concepts in psychodynamics,
so if you need a little extra help on understanding how all the terms I use fit together, my psychodynamic
video in the approaches unit should be able to help you out.
As its psychodynamics we are going to focus in this video on how the parent-child relationship
and processes in the unconscious mind lead to offending behaviour.
This is Freud’s topographical model of personality, he suggests we have an id, the pleasure principle,
this drives us to seek self satisfaction no matter the consequences. The Superego, the
morality principle, this drives us to follow the rules. And the Ego, the morality principle,
which attempts to find a balance between the two competing drives.
We are going to focus in this video on the role of the superego.
In an attempt to control our behaviour the superego has two tools, guilt when we perform
bad behaviour, and pride when we perform good behaviour.
But how effectively it can regulate our behaviour depends on how the superego develops. According
to Freud it develops during the phallic psychosexul stage. This is when the child is between 3
to 6 years old and resolving the oedipus complex for boys and electra complex for girls.
Its at this stage the child realises they cant out compete the same sex parent for the
oposite sex parents love. So they decide identify with the same sex parent, immitating them,
and in this way learning what is right and wrong behaviour from them.
Now a few things can go wrong here.
Firstly the child can have an underdeveloped superego. Perhaps the same sex parent isnt
around or they dont have a strong relationship with the child. The child can’t identify
and resolve the oedipus complex. This means as an adult the child won't be able to control
their ID, and will perform criminal acts.
But there is a problem if the superego is overdeveloped, this can happen if parents
are too strict. In this case there is overidentification and the superego completely dominates. This
leads to adults with a constant sense of guilt and need to punish themselves. This can even
result in committing criminal acts to justify their extreme guilt.
I’m not going to lie, I can kinda see it, but that is a bit of a weird one.
Finally there is a deviant superego. The oedipus complex is resolved normally, but the same
sex parent that is identified with is a criminal. This means the imitation is of a criminal
sense of morality, not the definition of morality that is shared by non criminal members of
society.
The use of defense mechanisms can also be used to explain criminal behaviour. These
are unconscious mental processes that alter our conscious perception of the world, protecting
the ego from feelings of anxiety, and committing crimes is likely to make the offender anxious.
We already know denial and displacement.
For denial the criminal may completely reject the idea that what they did was a crime, or
how serious their crimes really are. They may say, “ oh I didn't hurt him that badly.
He was just playing up to get me into trouble”
For displacement, a violent criminal who is feeling anger and frustration at someone they
can't release that anger to may go and release that anger on a weaker target. So if someone
is angry at their boss, they may release that anger at home by abusing his wife and children.
And one you may not have heard of before, rationalisation. This is attempting to justify
their behaviour, so a burglar would say, “well they clearly don’t care if I break in and
take stuff, they left the door unlocked!”
Finally Bowlby’s attachment theory also falls under psychodynamic explanations of
offending behaviour. Bowlby based his theory on psychodynamic principles, combined with
ideas from cognitive and evolutionary theory. Attachment theory also suggests that a poor
parental relationship results in criminality, but in this case it's the infant's very early
relationship with their mother.
Bowlby suggests that this first relationship acts as something called an internal working
model, effectively a blueprint for future relationships. If infants have an insecure
relationship with their mother then they will grow up thinking that other people can't be
trusted, negatively impacting on future relationships, leading to anti-social and eventually criminal
behaviours.
If the child has prolonged periods without receiving the mothers care and affection they
experience maternal deprivation. This, according to bowlby can lead to affectionless psychopathy.
This is feeling no empathy for other people's feelings or suffering and no personal guilt
for your own actions.
In his 44 thieves study, Bowlby linked affectionless psychopathy to high levels of delinquency
in young boys.
EVALUATIONS
So we are going to evaluate a Freudian theory, now if you feel you have a load of evaluations
ready to go, hold on a sec.
This is a point about evaluating Freud, but really it comes up again and again in the
optional topics. If you get asked an essay in this area, you are expected to link your
evaluation to the topic, in this case offending behaviour.
You wont get credit for spitting out a generic comment like, as Freud's theory contains concepts
that are not testable like the superego, it isn't taken seriously by researchers. I’m
not saying that point is wrong, what i'm saying is it's not shaped to the question asked.
Let me show you.
Bowlby’s work suggests a connection between antisocial behaviour in children and poor
parenting, but this can't be seen as scientific evidence for a poorly developed superego leading
to delinquency. This is because Freudian concepts like the superego are not directly observable
or falsifiable, meaning as an explanation of offending behaviour it cannot be empirically
tested, so will always be an unscientific explanation.
What I have done in this evaluation is use the generic evaluation of Freud's ideas being
untestable so not truly scientific concepts, but explains how that impacts on its ability
to explain what the topic is all about, offending behaviour.
Another positive is practical applications, well if we know early childhood experience
is linked to crime, we need to improve early childhood experience. Maybe with parenting
classes to make sure parents don’t leave their child with over or under developed superegos.
Or taking children away from parents who are serious criminals so they don't develop deviant
super egos. Bowlby's ideas are already accepted and every effort is made to adopt children
quickly and give new mothers the maximum amount of time with their infants.
But there are some pretty big criticisms. One of the main ones is a clear gender bias.
As females don't resolve the oedipus complex Freud argues their superego can’t be as
strong as males, meaning females would be less moral than males. Well this is an example
of alpha bias, exaggerating gender differences. and also the wrong way around from the clear
observation that more males are prisoners so likely less moral than females.
And finally Bowbly’s 44 thieves study was correlational, there is no way of knowing
cause and effect, the children's criminal behavior and maternal deprivation could have
been due to factors like poverty, socialisation or genetics.
Here is a real forensic exam question on psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour.
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so you don't miss the videos released right up to your exams, and I will see you in the
next psych boost video, dealing with offending behaviour.