psychodynamic explanation: blackburn’s superegos

Blackburn background

Blackburn (1993) suggests that the differential development of the superego can lead to criminal behaviour

Types of superegos

1. Weak superego

2. Over-harsh superego

3. Deviant

Weak superego

(Developed as a result of abnormal relationships within the family e.g. same sex parent being absent)

• child would fail to internalise the same-sex parent, resulting in fewer of the usual inhibitions against antisocial behaviour

• They would act in a ways that gratified their Id, regardless of the social constraints

Deviant superego

(developed as a result of internalising within a criminal same-sex parent)

• the child sees the morals that the parents see as acceptable and therefore internalise them. This leads to them having bad morals.

Over-harsh superego

(Developed as a result of an overly harsh same-sex parent)

• excessively powerful superego causes a person to be so filled with guilt every time they do something wrong. To resolve feelings of guilt they would commit a crime in order to be punished of their guilt

Link to Bowlby’s maternal deprivation

maternal deprivation can lead to affection less psychopathy- characterised by a lack of guilt, empathy and feelings for others, suggesting that they are likely to engage in delinquent activities

Strengths of Blackburn’s superegos

• research support- bowlby’s 44 thieves study demonstrated a correlation between maternal deprivation and criminal behaviour, which supports this explanation (weak superego is a result of abnormal family relationships)

  CA- this study is only relevant to girls (mother is their same-sex parent). This study therefore lacks population validity

Weaknesses of Blackburn’s superego

• Oversimplistic- there are many examples of people who experienced maternal deprivation who do not go on to become criminals, and theire are many criminals with stable family’s. This suggests that there are other explanations to criminal behaviour.

• Lack of falsifiability- freud’s theories claim that many of the psychological concepts hat explain behaviour are below conscious level, which means nobody is able to observe them. This means that this explanation is unscientific as it is impossible to prove wrong or right decreasing the validity of this explanation