Outline and Evaluate the Psyhcological approach to explaing criminality

One key element for the psychological approach to explaining criminality is an inadequate superego. This explanation draws on the Freudian theories of a tripartite structure of personality, made up of the Id, which is primarily the centre of impulse and desires, the Super ego which is an internalised moral code formed through the overcoming of either the Oedipus complex for males or Electra complex for females through identification with the same sex parent, and the Ego which mediates between them. In an individual prone to criminal behaviour, the super ego may either be too weak, which may occur if the parent is absent during the phallic stage, meaning the child cannot identify with the same sex parent and then internalise a fully formed super ego , and thus criminal behaviour is made more likely. On the other hand the superego may be too strong or overly harsh. A healthy superego is kind but firm, in contrast an excessively punitive or overly harsh superego means the individual may never be able to fulfil its standards so constantly feel a sense of inadequacy and thus guilt and anxiety. This may unconsciously drive the individual to perform criminal acts in order to satisfy the super ego's overwhelming desire for punishment. Finally the superego formed may be a deviant one, in that the superego the child internalises may be formed through identification with a parent who is also a criminal, and thus the child will internalise a criminal moral code. However, one issue with the psychological approach to explaining criminality is that it may lack strong supporting evidence. For instance if this theory is correct, since females according to Freud identify with their same sex parent to a lesser extant than males do, so thus have weaker superegos, we should see a greater rate of criminal behaviour amongst women. However this is not supported by evidence at all, in fact in the UK, men are 22x more likely than women to go to prison. There is also very little evidence to suggest that children raised without a same sex parent are more likely to commit crimes, and even if there is evidence to suggest that children raised by criminal parents may be more likely to commit crime, this could be due to shared genetics or shared environment. A further issue which may reduce how much confidence should be placed in the inadequate superego theory is that it is unfalsifiable. The superego is a mental concept so can not be tested empirically, so can be judged only on face value and not through scientific methods. The existence of a superego can never be disproven as it is a mental concept, so therefore does not lend itself to experimentation which seeks test and attempt to disprove theories. This is the reason why very often psychodynamic explanations are judged as pseudoscience, and thus as undermining or contributing little to our understanding of crime or how to prevent it.