Psychodynamic explanation

• Psychodynamic explanations: a perspective that describes the different forces, most of which are unconscious, that operate in the mind and direct human behaviour and experience
• The inadequate superego

  • Blackburn argued that if the Super ego is somehow inadequate then offending behaviour is inevitable because the Id is given free rein and not properly controlled
  • There are 3 types of inadequate super ego
• 1. The weak super ego

  • 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 immoral or offending behaviour more likely
• 2. The deviant super ego

  • if the Superego that a child internalises has immoral or deviant values then this can lead to offending behaviour
  • for instance a boy raised by a criminal father is not likely to associate guilt with wrong doing
• 3. The over-harsh superego

  • A healthy superego is based on identification with a parent who has firm rules but forgives transgressions
  • In contrast an excessively over-harsh parenting style can lead to a child with an over-harsh super ego where they are crippled by guilt, so has an unconscious drive to perform criminal acts to seek punishment to satisfy the superego
• The role of emotion

  • The effect of an inadequate super ego is to allow primitive, emotional demands to guide moral behaviour
  • This is a key feature of the psychodynamic approach as it deals with the emotional life of an individual, for example acknowledging the role of guilt and anxiety in developing offending behaviour
  • This also means a lack of guilt is important to understanding offending behaviour, as in cases of maternal deprivation theory
• Theory of maternal deprivation

  • Bowlby theory argued that meaningful relationships in adulthood were dependent on the child forming a continuous loving relationship with a mother-figure
  • Failure to establish such a relationship means a child is more likely to experience a number of damaging and irreversible consequences in later life
  • One of these is affectionless psychopathy, characterised by a lack of guilt or empathy
• 44 juvenile thieves

  • Bowlby conducted a study where he interviewed juvenile thieves and their families
  • 14 of the sample showed characteristics of affectionless psychopathy
  • Of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers during infancy.
  • In the non-offender group only 2 had experienced similar early separation
  • Bowlby concluded the effects of maternal deprivation had caused affectionless and offending behaviour among the juvenile thieves
• A03: research support for the link between offending and the super ego

  • Goreta conducted a Freudian style analysis of ten offeneders referred for psychiatric treatment
  • In all assessed there was disturbance to super-ego formation
  • 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 to satisfy the superego
  • This evidence supports the role of psychic conflicts and over-harsh superego as a basis of offending
• CC: The central principles of the inadequate superego are not supported

  • If this theory was correct we would expect all harsh parents to raise children who constantly experience guilt and anxiety
  • Evidence suggests, that the opposite is true, parents who raise children on harsh discipline often have rebellious children who rarely express feelings of guilt or self criticism
  • Questions the relationship between harsh parenting and excessive feelings of guilt from the child as predicted by the inadequate superego theory
• A03: Gender bias

  • The implicit assumption is that girls develop a weaker superego than boys because identification with the same-sex parent is not as strong
  • This is because girls do not experience the intense emotion associated with castration anxiety and are under less pressure to identify with their mothers
  • Therefore according to frued there superego is less realised, this would imply offnding rates should be higher in women
  • However it is the oppostie, in the UK 20x more men are in prison
• A03 gender bias continued...

  • Hoffman: conducted a study where children had to resist temptation, found little evidence of gender differences, and when there was, girls tended to be more moral
  • Means there is a bias in Freud's theory so may not be an appropriate explanation for offending behaviour
• A03: (-) Bowlby's theory is only based on an association between maternal deprivation and offending, there may be other factors

  • Lewis analysed data from interviews with 500 young people- found that maternal deprivation was a poor predictor for future offending
  • if there is a link it is not necessarily a causational one
  • There may be countless other reasons for this link, for example the maternal deprivation may be due to growing up in poverty- this may later cause offending
  • Suggests maternal deprivation may be one of the reasons for later offending but not the only reason