Psychodynamic Explanations

• how does the personality lead to offending behaviour?

  • an underdeveloped superego makes way for a dominant id, which is characterised by an individual unable to control their desires for pleasure, which can of course lead to criminal behaviour.
  • an overdeveloped superego might seem like the very opposite and therefore lead to someone being less likely to engage in crime
  • the overpowering of the superego leads to overwhelming feelings of guilt and little pleasure; therefore, a person may engage in criminal behaviour in order to release themselves from the anxiety caused by their guilt.
• how might the ego employ defence mechanisms?

  • Displacement – where the focus of a person’s anxiety is moved onto something else, namely a neutral target, where it might be considered more acceptable than the underlying impulse. For example, the actual focus of an individual’s anxiety or frustration is their parents but instead they release that tension by mugging somebody on the street.
  • Rationalisation – is where an individual creates a good reason for committing the acts that they do, despite them being unacceptable.
• how does bowlby maternal deprivation hypothesis lead to offending behaviour?

  • significant deprivation of maternal love during the critical period of attachment formation, could lead to a negative internal working model for future relationships and a negative understanding of the world, making criminal behaviour much more likely.
• what did Bowblys 44 thieves study suggest about offending behaviour?

  • Bowlby’s findings suggest that maternal deprivation is a key factor in a child’s development and is a good predictor of offending behaviour later in life, particularly if such individuals are classed as affectionless psychopaths, who are unlikely to show remorse or guilt for their actions.
• evaluation of psychodynamic explanation (1)

  • Psychodynamic theories have been criticised for a lack of falsifiability as Freud’s theory of personality is limited in that it cannot be tested scientifically. For example, the concept of the superego is difficult to test empirically and therefore lacks evidence, yet it is the crucial aspect of psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour. This is important as without such evidence, the theory is inherently flawed.
• evaluation of psychodynamic explanation (2)

  • Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis has been criticised for only considering the effect of the mother being absent. More recent research such as that carried out by Loeber et al. (2005), suggests that while family change does seem to be related to criminal behaviour in later life, it does not have to be a result of maternal deprivation. This is important as it highlights a potential lack of temporal validity in Bowlby’s research.
• evaluation of psychodynamic approach (3)

  • Gender bias: Freud’s theories were largely based around male samples and Bowlby’s 44 thieves were all male. Despite the majority of offenders being male (at least those that are accounted for by official records), there are female offenders as well and with clear gender bias in the research, it is difficult to see how the theories apply to women.