The Psychodynamic Approach to Criminality

Parents are viewed as an external object that can provide care and support but also hinder child development resulting in violent behaviours driven by unresolved previous conflicts (de Felice et al., 2020). Family background is a major contributor to the origins of aggression and violence that are learned in childhood. Moreover, a parent of the same sex in childhood who is absent, strict, or also an offender, foretell the circumstances of a weak, harsh, and deviant superego. Freud used these psychodynamic aspects as a predictor of the development of criminal behaviour in children in the future. This article will discuss the background behind criminals' antisocial behaviour in terms of the psychodynamic approach, and the types of psychoanalytic therapies that can be used to reduce recidivism rates and improve criminal reduction rates.

The Psychodynamic Approach

Aggression and violence from a psychological stance occur in response to adverse childhood experiences in the sense that people with antisocial tendencies report a history of neglect and rejection (Yakeley, 2018). This abuse originates from dysfunctional family relationships, the lack of a parental figure leads to internalised guilt that erupts into impulsive aggressive acts. The traumatic circumstances are suppressed into the unconscious (Aktaş et al., 2023); Freud focused on the influence of unconscious motives derived from childhood, which manifest into antisocial behaviours driving criminality, as an expression of the unresolved internalised conflict and psychological needs (Siyuan, 2024). Consequently, offenders use criminal acts as a repressed method to control their emotions and express them in a disturbed way. However, there is a lack of research regarding the psychoanalysis of criminal behaviours even though this made a major contribution to interventions and understanding the background behind why criminals offend (Yakeley, 2018). The psychodynamic approach is a holistic view of childhood background because it takes nature and nurture into account, however, it is deterministic and disregards an individuals access of freewill (Yakeley, 2018).

The role of the superego

Responsible for feelings of guilt, the superego develops through the interactions between the id and the ego (Schetz & Szubka, 2012, Doshi & Mishra, 2023). When the superego is weak, harsh, or deviant the aggressive energy is out of control, and the id acts out criminal desires (Schetz & Szubka, 2012, Tolbaru, 2021). These desires that are derived from a faulty superego are in response to feeling punished, therefore people commit crimes to be sent to prison, fulfilling the punishment desire. Parental function and family structure are correlated to the degree of superego development (Gallagher, 1986). There however, is limited accessibility to an individual’s unconscious mental state, making measuring levels of superego difficult to understand, therefore identification of the root cause of behaviour is hard to target and solve in interventions (Doshi & Mishra, 2023).

Moreover, every conscious experience has unconscious meanings. However, previous data collected through case studies does not provide a holistic perspective (Miller, 2003). A frail superego demonstrates that the ego is not in control, so crime-related behaviours are associated with oedipal complex failures and insufficient psychosexual development (de Felice et al., 2020).

Oedipal complex

The oedipal complex is the situation where a child has intense feelings of desire for the opposite sex parent, which circles feelings of jealousy and hostility for the same-sex parent, deriving antisocial behaviour due to intrapsychic anxieties criminals have never confronted (de Felice et al., 2020).

Aggression

Aggression can take place in many forms that range from minor events to more ferocious acts such as killings (Allen & Anderson, 2017). The scientific definition of aggression is any observable behaviour intended to harm another person, who is motivated to avoid this harm (Allen & Anderson, 2017). There are several types which makes it more difficult to determine whether or not aggression has occurred.

On the other hand, violence is separated as an extreme form of aggression that causes severe physical harm, attempting to fatally injure another person.

Violence

Antisocial Personality Disorder is associated with aggression and violence, which is also overrepresented in offending populations (Yakeley, 2018). Violence can also co-occur with socioeconomic factors such as unemployment and homelessness as a means to use crime as a method of survival (Siyuan, 2024). There are two types of violence.

Affective violence: this is the immediate defensive reaction associated with fight or flight.

Instrumental violence: is the lack of emotional involvement which often coincides with criminal activity which is calculated and purposeful.

There have been concerns regarding the focus of therapies and analysis of individuals alone, which provides little information, consequently, criminal background and violence would be better understood when evaluating the surrounding environment as a whole (Halleck, 1976). Therefore, you need to examine the constant forces of nature that conduct violence to answer the question of why some people are more susceptible to violence than others.

The psychoanalytic perspective of violence

The perspective of violence in terms of psychoanalysis is branched off into two conflicts of interest:

Self-preservative violence, which is triggered by threat and the motivation to eliminate any source of danger (Yakeley, 2018), this viewpoint stems from the fear of loss and abandonment which leads to emotional isolation and violent acts with the goal to protect their mother and their own sense of self.

Sadomasochistic violence is similar to instrumental violence in the sense of unconscious processes that emerge at later life stages.

Childhood Attachment

Early traumatic experiences hinder the attachment process in childhood, which affects empathy and impulse control, commonly associated with criminals (Yakeley, 2018). The lack of affection is a major contributor to antisocial behaviour (Doshi & Mishra, 2023). Individuals are not born with an innate behavioural fate to offend, instead, it is constructed by a broken parental relationship (Tolbaru, 2021). In a previous study, sex offenders suffered from brutality from their parents during their childhood, which affected the development of the superego and impulse control, resulting in criminality (Halleck, 1976). When family roles are not clearly defined, there is a lack of family support, and restraint regarding violent impulses is not taught. There have been multiple incidences where offenders have reported parental deprivation, which can lead to implications in terms of interventions and adjustments to family life, adapting the education of the child with the knowledge about the importance of the caregiver in the early stages of a person’s life (Wright & Wright, 1993).

The role of the father

Also known as the ‘third object’, the father leads a third perspective (Yakeley, 2018). Many violent criminals have a history of an absent or abusive father, who provided no source of love, which is associated with the deficits of the unconscious that correspond to the lack of empathy and remorse attributed to psychopaths. The research regarding the paternal role should be handled with caution revolving around the lack of temporal validity. This means that there needs to be an inclusion of single parents from loss or divorce and same-sex couples in future research.

Maternal relationships

Violence has originated from early relationships between the mother and infant where the mother is more concerned with her own needs than her baby’s (Yakeley 2018), which Freud has placed at the center of psychological development (Gallagher, 1986). When the mother is overwhelming and intrusive, the child is at risk of an obstructed development of their sense of self, resulting in aggression to create space between them and their mother (Yakeley, 2018). Male offenders have expressed mother-oriented needs for love and dependence, indicating the importance of a stable maternal relationship with their child. Otherwise, this could result in violence and psychopathy. However, a limitation of this evidence is that it is subject to gender bias due to the all-male sample. Therefore, further research should include female criminals and their childhood background (Morrow 1949), so that the findings can be generalised to a wider population, increasing the population validity.

Therapies

Prisons are responsible for the treatment and rehabilitation of criminals (Mulay et al., 2017). Therefore, therapies are used to assess the holistic existence of the unconscious, derived behind antisocial behaviour, to target this, and amend it (Smith, 1987). Therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamic therapies aim to prevent relapse and reduce recidivism rates, gaining awareness of the unconscious factors that shape their behaviour to resolve the trauma that has been suppressed from past experiences (Beail, 2001, Aktaş et al., 2023). By utilising the unconscious, transference, and defense mechanisms, assisting the processing of emotional experience to increase offenders' understanding of their past experiences becomes sufficient, allowing for the patient to feel relief (Aktaş et al., 2023).

Transference is the redirection of emotions felt by the criminal onto the therapist.

Countertransference is the redirection of the feelings felt by the therapist onto the patient. This relationship is necessary to catalyse the identification period of traumatic childhood events (Aktaş et al., 2023).

Long Term Therapy

Long-term treatment for criminals with behavioural problems usually lasts between 24 and 48 months, with follow-up appointments 4 years later (W. James & M. Stacey, 2013). Studies have shown that the long-term treatment plan is effective because no further crimes were committed after the treatment or at later follow-up stages. However, a control group was absent, and there was a lack of formal empirical measures, therefore the validity and reliability of findings stand questioned. Long-term therapy is also more costly and time-consuming since it takes place over a higher number of sessions. There is a high access demand because Psychodynamic Long-Term Therapy is a more viable option of intervention compared to CBT (Aktaş et al., 2023). This is because CBT does not consider the root cause and background of a person’s criminal behaviour.

Short Term Therapy

Psychodynamic Short-Term Therapy (PSTT) has strict entry criteria for selecting appropriate candidates with careful consideration due to time limitations (Aktaş et al., 2023). To be time efficient and have greater access to emotional trauma, therapists set goals the patients need to achieve after each session. Patients tend to have 12 sessions that involve ego strengthening and interpretations to see if patients can respond correctly to new insights therapists present. There are reports that PSTT generates larger effect sizes for targeting problems and social functioning, therefore being more effective than psychoanalysis and long term therapies for people with problems with aggression (Beail, 2001, Aktaş et al., 2023). However, the downside to PSTT is that many criminals do not have access to it due to the harsh entry criteria.

Group therapy

Group therapies, in sizes of 15-20, are more effective as people feel contained in group settings because they feel that a one-on-one situation is more intimate. Moreover, therapy in a group can help the offenders to see their difficulties that are reflected in others to help reduce their antisocial behaviour to identify triggers related to their violent impulses (Yakeley, 2018). This type of therapy is also more cost-efficient (Aktaş et al., 2023), and it is preferred by the offenders because they feel more confident in group settings.

Future implications

However, more research is required in the area revolving around the optimum duration of therapy as there is still a debate as to whether long-term or short-term psychodynamic treatment is most efficient (Mulay et al., 2017). Also, future research must gather larger samples and scales to gain greater confidence with the influence of extraneous variables and allow the generalisability of the findings to wider populations (W. James & M. Stacey, 2013). For example, therapies are used to address underlying elements that can impact future criminal behaviour, but age samples have consistently not been completely inclusive as they mostly range from 17-42, therefore, there is no evidence of the improvement of criminal behaviour in the older population (Beail, 2001). Hence, the samples lack population validity and age inclusivity. Future therapies should focus on practical outcomes as a symptom indicator to attempt criminal reduction rates (Aktaş et al., 2023).

Therefore, the Psychodynamic Approach to the background of criminality provides an important insight into the behaviour of why people offend and the interventions that can be used to help individuals understand their aggressive tendencies to aid the reduction of recidivism in prisons.

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