Psychogenic Causes of Crime

1. Psychogenic Causes of Crime Chapter 6

2. Psychogenic Causes of Crime • Individualistic theories of crime • Focus is on how personality is created • Two schools of thought: • Psychoanalysis • Personality traits

3. Psychoanalytic Theories of Crime • Developed by Sigmund Freud • Not all desires and behavior are socially acceptable, so they are repressed into the unconscious • Three parts of the mind: • Id – primal urges of sex & violence • Libido: Sex drive • Ego – mediates unconscious urges & societal requirements • Superego – internalization of society’s rules; “conscience” • Crime is a result of: • A too-strong id or a too-weak superego • An uncontrolled libido (rape or sexual assault) • Repression (pretending id urges don’t exist) • Projection (believing that others possess the drives one has repressed; e.g. homophobia) • Reaction formation (exaggeration of behavior to the opposite extreme of the drive) • Too-strong superegos may result in excessive guilt, resulting in an unconscious desire to be caught • Self-confirming theories that cannot be falsified and cannot predict behavior

4. Personality Theories • Psychological trait tests (e.g. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory II, Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire) measure personality traits • Trait impulsivity, antisocial ideation, hyperactivity, and lack of empathy have all been associated with criminal behavior

5. Eysenck’s Conditioning Theory • One’s inherited nervous system and environmental conditioning forces impact three critical personality features: • Extraversion: outgoing, risk-taking, impulsive, requires a lot of activity; can predispose a person to exciting criminal activity (associated with low cerebro-cortical arousal) and lowers response to sanctions • Neuroticism: increased emotionality related to malfunctioning autonomic nervous system; can lead to crime due to low self-control • Psychoticism: lack of empathy, cruelty; related to testosterone and serotonin

6. Psychopathy (Antisocial Personality):Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) Glibness/superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth Pathological lying Cunning/manipulative Lack of remorse or guilt Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric) Callousness; lack of empathy Failure to accept responsibility for own actions Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom Parasitic lifestyle Poor behavioral control Lack of realistic long-term goals Impulsivity Irresponsibility Juvenile delinquency Early behavior problems Revocation of conditional release Promiscuous sexual behavior Many short-term marital relationships Criminal versatility Acquired behavioral sociopathy/sociological conditioning

7. Other mental illnesses connected with crime • Bipolar disorder • Characterized by mood extremes and risk-taking or extreme behavior during manic episodes; result of neurotransmitter imbalance and is heritable • Schizophrenia • Characterized by psychosis and inappropriate emotions which can lead to violence; neurobiological and heritable

8. Policy and Field Implications • Psychology and biology often interact to produce behavior • Medication & therapy as sanctions? • Debate about how much intervention is permissible to address psychological antecedents of crime • Criminology often shuns psychological explanations due to its history as a sociologically-rooted field • Interactive theories?