Psychodynamic explanations

• Psychodynamic explanations focus on the role of parent-child relationships in developing the personality of a criminal adult and the unconscious mental processes that lead to criminal behaviour.
• The superego explanation:

  • Morality principle attempting to regulate the behaviour by enabling guilt and pride.
  • Develops in the phallic stage.
  • Child resolves the Oedipus or Electra complex identifying with the same sex parent and imitating their behaviour.
  • Deviant superego occurs when a child identifies with a criminal parent and the behaviours of said parent are imitated, leading to the superego not having a sense of morality which is shared by society.
• Defence mechanisms are unconscious mental processes that are used to avoid the ego, experiencing anxiety or guilt:

  • Denial - Criminal rejects the reality or seriousness of the nature of their crimes.
  • Displacement - Violent criminals feel anger towards a target and they are unable to express the anger, so they release it on weaker target.
  • Rationalisation - The criminals find a way to argue that their crime is justified in some way.
• Bowlby's attachment theory states theories were based on the psychodynamic background combined with an understanding of cognitive and evolutionary ideas. This theory suggests a poor infant-caregiver relationship results in criminal behaviour.

  • First relationship with mother forms an internal working model for our future relationships. Children with an insecure attachment expect other people cannot be trusted which negatively influences future interactions.
  • Maternal deprivation leads to affectionless psychopathy which is linked to high levels of delinquency.
• Blackburn (1993) suggested that there are 3 types of inadequate superegos which are all associated with criminality:

  1. The deviant superego means that the child will internalise abnormal moral standards from their criminal parents.
  2. The weak superego is present due to a lack of identification with the same-sex parent during the phallic stage, perhaps because they were absent.
  3. The overly harsh superego craves for punishment due to being accustomed to such a feeling because the child had grown up with over-harsh parents.
• Strengths of psychodynamic explanations:

  • Research support for the superego - Goreta conducted a Freudian-style analysis of 10 offenders referred for psychiatric treatment. In all those 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.
• Strengths of the psychodynamic explanations:

  • Practical application - Theories between the link of early childhood experience and later criminality can be applied to reduce crime. Freud's ideas can be used to ensure children's superego is not over or under developed with parenting classes. In adoption, care should be taken as to not give the child a deviant same sex parent to identify with.
• Limitations of the psychodynamic explanations:

  • Evidence contradicting Bowlby's 44 thieves findings - Lewis found that maternal deprivation during childhood was not indicative or a reliable predictor of the likelihood of becoming criminal in the future, nor were maternally deprived children at a significant disadvantage in terms of forming close relationships during adulthood. Therefore, this decreases the validity of Blackburn’s conclusion that inadequate superegos are a reliable predictor of criminality.
• Limitations of the psychodynamic explanations:

  • Gender bias - Hoffman argued that in line with Freud’s psychodynamic approach, girls should be at a greater risk of becoming criminal because they suffer from penis envy instead of castration anxiety, and so their superego has been internalised to a smaller extent compared to boys. However, statistical evidence does not support this idea. Instead, girls within the phallic stage actually display a greater appreciation of the value of delayed gratification compared to boys.
• Limitations of the psychodynamic explanations:

  • Lacks scientific credibility - The superego of an individual’s internalised sense of right and wrong is embedded within the unconscious tripartite personality, meaning that such a concept cannot be empirically and objectively measured. Therefore, since the superego is a concept which cannot be proven wrong, this suggests that, according to Popper’s criterion of falsification, that it is unfalsifiable and therefore pseudoscientific. This does little to increase the scientific credibility of psychology.