Law and You > Criminal Laws > Criminology > Psychodynamic Theory of Criminal Behaviour
Crime is present in the society because of the mentality of the people. Psychologists have long been interested in the minds of criminals. Psychological theories of crime tend to see offending behaviour from a psychological perspective, focusing on aspects such as a person’s personality, thinking patterns, and cognitive distortions. According to the psychological explanation of crime, crime is more of a result of thinking patterns and life experiences than biological reasons. Psychological theories of crime see offending behaviour as a result of theindividual’s mind and behaviours; specifically, psychological theories of crime focus on personality types (Eysenck), cognitive approaches (faulty thinking patterns, cognitive distortions, and moral reasoning), and psychodynamic (abnormal ego, superego and id) and learning approaches (conditioning and differential association theory). In this article we shall discuss Psychodynamic Theory of Criminal Behaviour.
There are basically five major psychological theories that are associated with criminal psychology which deals with the thoughts and behaviours of offenders and criminals. These are:
- Psychodynamic theory
- Cognitive theory
- Behavioural theory
- Personality theory and
- Theory of intelligence.
These theories explain dynamics underlying crime and criminal behaviours.
Psychodynamic Theory and Criminal Behaviour:
This theory largely comes to us from the mind of noted psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of psychoanalysis. He argued that everyone has instinctual drives (called the “id”) that demand gratification. Moral and ethical codes (called the “superego”) regulate these drives, and adults later develop a rational personality (called the “ego”) that mediates between the id and superego. Based on this idea, criminal behaviour is seen primarily as a failure of the superego. Thus, psychodynamic theory sees criminal behaviour as a conflict between the id, ego and superego. This conflict can lead to people developing problematic behaviour and delinquency.
According to the psychodynamic theory, the early childhood experiences of the individual are responsible for such behaviours. While id was considered the primitive part of the individual’s mental makeup and was also present at birth onwards, the Ego developed in the early years of the individual’s life. An individual’s mental growth starts from the childhood, from where he starts to learn and his growth for good or bad things starts from there only. Something happened in childhood is constantly drawn in person’s mind, frustration, anger , depression , anxiety of childhood shows up in future. Childhood worst experience will affect the future by the way of depression, anxiety that is the main reason most of the youth or teenagers indulge themselves in crimes. Most of the youth are drug addicts because of their family issues or issues relating to relationships nowadays or if their friend is doing, they will also do the same for the sake of popularity amongst their friends or group or college, school. Person’s personality is controlled by unconscious mental process that is grounded in early process.
The id functions on pleasure principle, and demands immediate gratification of its needs, desires and wishes regardless of the circumstances. Psychodynamic theorists are of the view that the individual’s personality is controlled by unconscious mental processes having their origin in the person’s childhood. Thus, the id represents the basic biological drives for food, sex and other needs for the individual’s very survival.
The ego is the logical, rational, realistic part of the personality. The ego functions on the reality principle, in the sense that it looks for the available sources in the environment that could gratify the id’s needs. Thus the ego evolves from the id and draws its energy from the id. The ego must consider the constraints of the real world in determining the appropriate times, places and objects for gratification of the id’s wishes.
The Super ego is considered the moral arm of the individual’s personality. It is the embodiment of all the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’, imbibed by the individual on the basis of do’s and don’ts, dictated by the parents and significant others. When someone develops moral standards and values of the community, family, friends, good or bad behaviour or morality is developed is super ego.
When the child is age 5 or 6 years, the superego, the moral component of the personality is formed. The superego has two parts:
- The conscience is the sense of guilt when the person does something wrong. The conscience consists of all the behaviours for which we have been punished and about which we feel guilty;
- Ego Ideal is the idealistic view of all that which is correct/right. The ego ideal contains the behaviours for which we have been praised and rewarded and about which we feel pride and satisfaction.
At first the superego reflects only the parent‘s expectations of what is good and right, but it expands over time to incorporate teachings from the broader social world. In its quest for moral perfection, the superego sets moral guidelines that define and limit the flexibility of the ego.
Any conflict between these three forces or an imbalance between them could cause delinquent and deviant behaviour in a person. While the Ego tries to gratify all the needs of the id, it also makes sure that the super ego’s requirements are not ignored and the ideal self remains and the person is not overwhelmed by guilt feelings. Thus the ego strives to strike a balance between the id’s desires and wishes and the moral requirements of the super ego. So long as the ego is strong and capable, neither the id nor the super ego becomes dominant or overpowering. An approach called psychoanalytic criminology is drawn from Freudian psychoanalysis, which uses a method to study crimes and criminal behaviour.
According to psychodynamic theory, the Id has been considered responsible for criminal behaviour. As mentioned above, Id is concerned with immediate gratification of its needs with no concern for others or what is right and what is wrong. For instance, criminals have no concern for their victims or the society or its laws and regulations. They are generally lonely, interested in getting what they want by forcibly taking away from others their possessions in the process injuring, harming the persons, to such an extent that if situation warrants, they may take away the victim’s life too. Thus, psychodynamic theory explains criminal behaviour in terms of a dominant Id, frustration, provocation and childhood experiences such as being neglected, unhappy and miserable, lack of love and nurturing and a very weak super ego and a weak, which is linked to immaturity, and dependency on others.
Limitations to Psychoanalytical Theory:
- It is deterministic. The approach suggests that behaviour is predetermined and hence creates an impression that people do not have free will
- It over-emphasises childhood experience as the source of the abnormality. While this is true in some cases, it isn’t necessary to work with childhood experiences for most issues
- Though it is a thorough explanation it is very difficult to test or validate the theory through empirical work.
- The actual patterns of criminal conduct usually differ generally from Freud’s explanation. Law breakers go to extremes top avoid detection. This fact makes his hypothesis of that criminal suffers from a compulsive need to be punished and be cleansed from their guilty feelings.