Evaluation

• Gender Bias

  An implicit assumption within Freudian theory is that girls develop a weaker superego than boys - having not experienced castration anxiety, girls are under less pressure to identify with their mothers than boys with their fathers, so their superego, and morality, is less realised

  The implication of this is that females should be more prone to criminal behaviour than males

  Not supported by evidence - Hoffman(1975) found no evidence of gender differences in a study where children were required to resist temptation - little girls tended to be more moral than boys
• Weakness - Contradictory Evidence

  There's little evidence that children raised without a same-sex parent are less law-abiding as adults - contradicting Blackburn's argument

  Similarly, if children who are raised by parents with pro-crime attitudes go on to commit crime themselves, this could be due to the influence of genetics or socialisation, rather than a deviant superego

  Finally, the idea that criminal behaviour reflects an unconscious desire for punishment seems wrong, as most offenders go to great lengths to conceal their crimes suggesting they want to avoid punishment at all costs
• Weakness - Unconscious Concepts

  Psychodynamic explanations offer from a lack of falsifiability

  The many unconscious concepts with freudian theory mean that application to crime are not open to empirical testing

  In the absence of supporting evidence, arguments such as the inadequate superego can only be judged on face values rather than scientific worth

  Psychodynamic explanations are regarded as pseudoscientific and may contribute little to our understanding of crime, or how to prevent it

  Bowlby did provide evidence to support his theory, though 44 thieves is methodologically weak