Psychodynamic Explanations

• Superego + id + ego = tripartite structure of personality.
• The superego is formed at the end of the phallic stage of child development when children resolve the Oedipus complex or Electra complex for girls.
• Superego works on the morality principle and punishes the ego through guilt for wrongdoing, whilst rewarding it with pride for moral behaviour.
• Ronald Blackburn suggests if the superego is deficient or inadequate then criminal behaviour is inevitable because the id is in charge and  is not properly controlled.
• There are three types of inadequate superegos:
  • The weak superego - same-sex parent is absent during the phallic stage, the child cannot internalise a fully-formed superego as there is opportunitu for identification. This makes immoral and criminal behaviour more likely.
  • The deviant superego - The child internalises immoral or deviant values this leads to offending behaviour. E.G. a boy who is raised by a criminal father is not likely to associate guilt with wrongdoing.
  • The over-harsh superego - An excessively/overly harsh superego means the individual is surrounded by guilt and anxiety. This may drive the individual to perform criminal acts in order to satisft the superego's need for punishment.

• John Bowlby argued that the ability to form meaniful relationships in adulthood was dependent upon the child forming a warm, continuous relationship with a mother-figure.
• Failure to establish a unique, superior bond with the care-giver during the critical period (first few years of life) means the child will experience a number of damaging and consequences in later life. One of these is the development of a particular personality type, known as affectionless psychopathy, characterised by a lack of guilt, empathy and feelings for others.
• Maternally deprived individuals are likely to engage in acts of delinquency and cannot develop close relationships with others.

His study:

• 44 juvenile thieves
• Method: Interviews with the thieves and their families.
• He found that 14/44 showed personality and behavioural characteristics that could be classified as 'affectionless psychopathy'.
• Out of the 14, 12/14 had experienced prolonged seperation from their mothers during infancy.
• In a non-criminal group, only 2 had experienced similar early seperation.

• He concluded that the effects of maternal deprivation had caused affectionless and delinquent behaviour among the juvenile thieves.

• Gender bias is an issue. The assumption that girls develop a weaker superego than boys is too stereotyped. Having not experienced castration anxiety, girls are under less pressure to identify with their mothers than boys are with their fathers, so their superego and their sense of morality is less fully realised. The implication of this is that females should be more prone to criminal behaviour than males.
  • Martin Hoffman found hardly any evidence of gender differences, when there was, little girls tended to be more moral than little boys. This was part of a study where children were required to resist temptation.
• There is some contradictory evidence as there is little evidence that children raised without a same-sex parent are less law-abiding as adults. Thid contradicts Blackburn's weak superego argument.
  • If children are raised by deviant parents and go on to commit crime themselves, this could be due to the influence of genetics or socialisation, rather than forming a deviant superego.
  • The idea that criminal behaviour reflects a desire for punishment seems not believeable, as most offenders go to great lengths to conceal their crimes which suggests they want to avoid punishment.

• Psychodynamic explanations in general suffer from a lack of falsifiability, this is because the many unconscious concepts are not open to empirical testing. In the absense of supporting evidence, arguments such as the inadequate superego can only be judged on their face value rather than their scientific worth. Thus, PE are seen as pseudoscientific (fake science) and may contribute little to our understanding of crime, or how to prevent it.
• There are some methodological issues with Bowlby's research. His study has be criticised for example, he has been accused of researcher bias as his preconceptions of what he expected to find may have influenced the responses of his interviewees.
  • Bowlby also failed to draw a distiction between deprivation and privation within his research as many of the thieves has experienced privation which other psychologists suggest its more damaging than deprivation.
• Hilda Lewis - analysed data drawn from interviews with 500 young people and found that maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of future offending and the ability to form a close bonds in adolescence. Prolonged seperation does not indicate a causal link between depriavtion and delinquency as there are other reaons for this link such as genetic factors and socialisation (differential association theory).