Psychodynamic

• A weakness of this explanation is that it exaggerates the differences between males and females, regarding offending behaviour
• Freud argues that females are less moral than males
• Freud's explanation


  • Males fear castration by their fathers for moral transgressions, whereas females only fear losing their mother's love
  • This means that girls don't have pressure to identify with their mothers, so the superego and sense of morality are less recognised
• This is a weakness because it contains alpha bias
• It suggests that females are more likely to offend as it implies that females have weaker superegos
• However, in reality, the majority of criminals are male, not female
• Males outnumber females in prisons throughout the world
• Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory has many methodological issues
• The 44 thieves study as supporting evidence for the inadequate superego theory has many flaws
• Flaws of the 44 thieves study

  • Researcher bias, preconceptions of what is expected to be found may influence responses of interviewees
  • Failed to draw a distinction between deprivation and privation within the research
• Many of the thieves studied had experienced privation, which many considered to be more damaging than deprivation
• The main evidence supporting inadequate superego is not reliable
• Lewis et al. analysed data from 500 youths and found maternal deprivation a poor predictor of later criminality as well as the ability to form close relationships in adolescence
• This could be a third factor and is criticising Bowlby's theory
• Another weakness is that it lacks falsifiability (not testable) where many unconscious concepts within Freudian theory mean application to crime not open to empirical testing
• The absence of supporting evidence creates arguments such as the inadequate superego, and this can only be judged on their face validity rather than scientific worth
• The psychodynamic explanation is considered pseudoscientific, which is fake science, rather than real science according to Karl Popper
• This suggests that the theory isn't scientific so it weakens the reliability of it as an explanation for offending