Psychodynamic

• What’s the superego?

  1 of 3 parts of personality.This develops at the end of phallic stage with the resolution of the Oedipus complex/Electra complex.
• What are the 3 explanations for crime revolving around the superego (Blackburn,1993) ?

  Weak superego 

  Deviant superego

  Over-harsh superego
• What’s the weak superego?

  Absence of same sex parent 
• What’s the deviant superego?

  Internalisation of deviant values 
• What’s the overharsh superego?

  Satisfying the superegos need for punishment 
• What’s Bowlby’s theory of attachment?

  Importance of the primary attachment figure 
• What did Blackburn argue?

  Blackburn (1993) argued that if the Superego is somehow deficient or inadequate then offending behaviour is inevitable because the Id is given ‘free reign’ and not properly controlled.According to Blackburn, a weak ego can occur if the same-gender parent is absent during the phallic stage. This is because the child has no opportunity for identification and so cannot internalise a fully-formed Superego. According to Blackburn this would make immoral or criminal behaviour more likely.
• One strength is research support for the link to the superego.Goreta conducted a Freudian style analysis of ten offenders referred for psychiatric treatment.Those that were assessed,disturbances in superego formation were diagnosed.Each offender experienced the need for punishment manifesting itself as a desire to commit acts of wrongdoing and offend (possibly due to an over harsh superego).This evidence seems to support the role of psychic conflicts and an over-harsh superego as a basis for offending 
• Counterpoint for the research support

  If this theory were correct we would expect harsh punitive parents to raise children who often experience guilt.Evidence suggests that the opposite is true for example children rarely express guilt.This calls into question the relationship between a strong,punitive internal parent and excessive feelings of guilt within the child.
• One limitation of Freudian theory is that it’s gender biased.Psychodynamic theory assumes girls develop a weaker superego than boys - they don’t experience castration anxiety so have less need to identify with their mothers.Although there are 20 times more men than women in prison and Hoffman found no gender differences in children’s moral behaviour.Therefore,suggests there is alpha bias in Freuds theory and means it may not be appropriate as an explanation of offending behaviour 
• Another limitation is that Bowlby’s theory is based on an association.Lewis analysed 500 interviews with young people,maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of future offending and the ability to form close relationships in adolescence.Even if there is a link there’s other reasons for it such as maternal deprivation may be due to growing up in poverty.There this matters as it suggests that maternal deprivation may be one of the reasons for later offending behaviour,but not the only reason.