Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Psychodynamic explanations of offending
- Inadequate superego
- Freudian theory would suggest that offending
behaviour happens due to an imbalance between
the three components of personality
(id,ego,superego) caused by the id not being
sufficiently controlled.
- Three types of
superego may result in
offending behaviour
- Weak superego
- Absence of same sex parent
therefore child can't identify with
their moral code. The child grows up
to have no sense of right or wrong
- Deviant superego
- Same sex parent the chid
identifies with is imoral. The
child internalises a deviant
moral code and so views of
right and wrong differ from
society.
- Over-harsh superego
- The childs superego is excessively punitive
and demanding of guiilt leading to the child
having a need for punishment. The person
will engage in criminal behaviour because
they have an uncosncious conflict to be
punished.
- Many people without a same sex
parent turn out to be perfectly law
which goes against the idea of
inadequate superego
- Defence mechanisms
- Unconscious processes to protect the conscious self from unpleasant event
- Denial
- Refusing to accept an unpleasant
event is happening as its too
disturbing so a person may
commit a murder but refuse to
consciously acknowledge what
they have one to refuse to
recognise the severity of their
actions
- Rationalisation
- Explains unacceptable
behavious in a rational way
e.g. a person who attacks a
provocatively dressed person
may ssay they asked for it
and needed to be taught a
lesson
- displacement
- Taking anger/frustration
out from your girlfriend
onto a stranger in the
street by attacking them
- Unconscious - can't be tested and so theres no real evidence for their existence
- Cant explain all crimes as some
crimes such as fraud require
careful planning rather than
impulsively acting on irrational
thought processes
- Maternal deprivation
- John Bowlby - being deprived of a
continous loving relationship in the
first two years of live will result in
irreversible damage including
delinquency
- Evidence comes from studies carried out
on animals deprieved of their mothers and
from Bowlbys own research with 44
Juvenile delinquents.
- Findings from animals may not be
generalizable to human behaviour
- Bowlbys study had many criticisms - data was
reterospective and so likely to be unreliable. Even
if maternal deprivation was a contributing factor
to criminality it is unlikely to be the only
explanation as there isn't a simple cause and
effect link.
- Can explain different types of offending as
often the offender has no feelings for their
victim
- According to Freud the greater fear of castratiob leads to a
stronger superego in boys rather than girls. So males should be
more moral however statistics show that they commit more
crime than females.
- Hoffman - females have
much stronger moral
orientation than males
which goes against what
freud would say
- Rely heavily on qualitative case studies - very subjective
and allows for behaviour to be interpreted in different
ways by different people.