Limits and Likelihood of a Psychoanalytic Reflection in Criminology

• NCJ Number: 73437
• Journal: Deviance et societe Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1979) Pages: 301-322
• Author(s): J M Labadie
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: French
• Country: Switzerland

Annotation

Within the limitations imposed by their lack of practical experience in the realities of crime, psychoanalysts can contribute valuable insights to criminological research on the psychological correlates of crime.

Abstract

Psychoanalysts gain little practical experience through personal contact with criminals since their only role in the criminal justice court is that of forensic psychiatry. As a consequence, psychonalysts have been forced to rely on the theoretical models of crime and deviance in trying to formulate psychological explanations for transgression. One psychoanalytical theory considers the cause of deviant and criminal behavior to be arrested emotional growth, i.e., a failure of the superego (or critical conscience) to develop. Another theory ascribes criminal acts to an inner conflict between the criminal's libido and the demands of his superego, which he considers impossibly high and from which he tries to escape by regressing to the stage of primary narcissism, dominated by archaic, ancestral, patterns of violence. A third psychoanalytical approach conceptualizes that the criminal already suffers from an overwhelming feeling of guilt before he actually commits the act which was prefigured in his psyche: he seeks release by acting out his impulses, because he is unable to verbalize his criminal fantasies. Generally, psychoanalysts view criminal and deviant behavior as the acting out of inner conflicts, including those created by the Oedipus complex. Criminologists, on the other hand, argue that in the scenario of crime which they observe at first hand every day, socioeconomic and situational factors, such as poverty, anomie, and rejection, play the chief roles. However, many criminologsts do not reject entirely the theories of psychoanalysis on the grounds that they can explain some of the criminogenic factors related to the psychodynamics of the criminal act. Fourteen references are appended.