Psychodynamic Explanations (AQA A Level Psychology)

The role of the superego & offending behaviour

• The superego is one of the personality structures of Freud’s tripartite theory of personality (part of the psychodynamic approach)

• The tripartite theory of personality is the conceptualisation of three aspects of personality: id, ego and superego, each of which influences behaviour separately or via a conflict in which one aspect wins over the other one (e.g. the id may triumph over the superego when it comes to choosing partying over studying)

• Freud claimed that the superego emerges towards the end of the phallic phase of psychosexual development (around the age of six years old) when the child has gone through the Oedipus/Electra complex

• The role of the superego is parental to some extent: it is the part of the personality that makes judgements about the person’s behaviour, issues admonishments and provides moral and ethical standards to which the person is expected to adhere (the superego operates according to the morality principle)

• The relevance of the superego to offending behaviour is based on the idea that if the superego is deficient or lacking in some way then the wilder, more impulsive (and amoral ) part of the personality - the id - will take over (the id operates according to the pleasure principle)

• There are three types of deficient superego, each of which could be a key contributory factor to a person turning to crime (Blackburn, 1993):

  • Underdeveloped or weak superego: if an individual has not gone through the Oedipus/Electra complex they have not identified with the same-sex parent:  this could result in them experiencing less guilt and  more immorality /amorality than others

  • Overdeveloped or harsh superego: this is likely to result in an individual experiencing extreme guilt which may lead them to commit crimes with the intention of being caught and punished, additionally a harsh superego may produce an outburst of antisocial behaviour (too much emphasis on being ‘good’) if someone finds the pressure overwhelming

  • Deviant superego: if an individual  identifies with the same sex parent who has deviant morals and values (very likely criminal in nature) then these attitudes/behaviours are internalised by the individual; in this way criminal behaviour is presented as the norm so zero guilt is attached to criminal acts 

Freud’s tripartate structure of personality.

Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis & offending behaviour

• Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis (MDH) stems from his attachment theory which suggests that children begin to attach to an adult (the primary caregiver) from birth and that this process is an instinctive mechanism aimed to promote survival

• Attachment, Bowlby argued, is an essential component of developing social and personal skills e.g. understanding what it means to be ‘you’, understanding what a loving, close relationship is, feeling wanted/nurtured/special, knowing how to give and receive love and affection

• Bowlby’s concept of a primary caregiver was the mother so if the bond between mother and child was broken or disrupted (particularly in early childhood) then this would wreak havoc in the child’s life, bringing emotional and psychological damage with it

• The relevance of the MDH to offending behaviour is based on the idea that if the child experiences maternal deprivation they will go on to develop affectionless psychopathy

• Affectionless psychopathy can be seen in behaviours such as:

  • A lack of guilt or remorse

  • A lack of empathy

  • Viewing other people as objects or as ‘props’ to use for personal gain

  • Sole focus on the self with a lack of regard for others

  • A tendency to cruelty

  • An inability to form relationships

• People who are affectionless psychopaths are, according to Bowlby ‘primed’ to be criminal as they are likely to be impulsive and risk-taking, have little regard for consequences and have no concern for other people

Are all young thieves affectionless psychopaths? And are all affectionless psychopaths a result of maternal deprivation?

Research which investigates psychodynamic explanations

• Megargee (1966) found that violent offenders with no prior history of criminal behaviour became suddenly violent without warning which suggests that the overdeveloped superego contributed significantly to the offending behaviour

• Bowlby (1944) - interviewed a sample of juvenile (i.e. young) offenders compared to a sample of non-offenders and found that the offenders were more likely to have experienced maternal deprivation early in life and to display features of affectionless psychopathy

Evaluation of psychodynamic explanations

Strengths

• Freud was one of the first psychologists to stress the importance of childhood experiences in adult behaviour, giving his theory good external validity

• Maternal deprivation theory could be used to understand antisocial/disturbed behaviour in children who have experienced early life in care (see Rutter’s 1998 research on Romanian orphans)

Weaknesses

• Freud’s theory is highly subjective and leans heavily on individual interpretation which means that it is unfalsifiable i.e. lacking the features of science hence it is not possible to formulate a hypothesis to test the theory

• The MDH is strongly dependent on Bowlby’s 44 Thieves study which has been criticised for showing researcher bias and confirmation bias

Link to Issues & Debates:

Freud’s theory takes a nomothetic approach to explaining offending behaviour as it assumes that everyone moves through the psychosexual stages i.e. it is universalist in its perspective. Even though Freud did not test large samples of participants (he worked on case studies of individuals and used qualitative methodology) his theory was intended to suggest general laws of behaviour hence it lacks an idiographic dimension.

Freud’s theory is also prone to alpha bias as he suggested that females develop a weaker superego than males: if this were true then women would outnumber men a) in the total number of crimes committed and b) in the prison population, neither of which are borne out by statistics.

Bowlby’s MDH is deterministic as it assumes that any form of deprivation in early childhood will lead to adverse outcomes. The free will side of this debate would argue that not everyone is doomed to the same fate and that plenty of children who have experienced deprivation (or privation ) go on to lead healthy and successful lives.