Psychological Theories: Introduction to Freud, Behaviorism and Criminality (PDF)

Psychological Theories Introduction Attempting to explain the nature of human consciousness and conscious thought has been a central question in the branch of philosophy known as ontology – the philosophy of what exists. How that question is answered helps provide the foundation for various models o...

Psychological Theories Introduction Attempting to explain the nature of human consciousness and conscious thought has been a central question in the branch of philosophy known as ontology – the philosophy of what exists. How that question is answered helps provide the foundation for various models of psychology. The word psychology comes from the root: psyche. This word relates to the very earliest debates in western (Greek) philosophy attempting to describe how the mind – human consciousness – sentience – operates as a separate thing from the physical human body. Early Psychological Ideas Linked to Crime A number of people attempted to use early psychological ideas to explain criminal behavior. Three of the best-known early theorists are noted here. Maudsley (1867) o Mental degenerates - decreased self-control; inherited mental defects that lessened self-control. Garofolo (1885), discussed earlier in Bio theories. o psychological degenerates - lack of empathy, a sort of mental throwback who had no feelings of empathy Goring (1913) o Defective intelligence; found lower intelligence levels among a large number of English convicts compared to the general population. All of these theorists are part of the biological school of inherited criminality discussed earlier. Their theories track with the basic theory that criminals inherit a defect from their parents. The defect is a defect in character (e.g. Maudsley and Garofolo) or a defect in mental ability (Goring) that lessens their ability to resist criminal urges. What we consider “modern” psychological theories generally trace to the work of Sigmund Freud, who was not a criminologist, but whose work spurred much of what we call psychology. For our purposes, we will divide psychological theories into three basic models of behavior. Three Psychology Models Psychoanalytical Behaviorism Neuro-psychological An essential difference between these three models of psychology is how they view the concept of the “mind”, the psyche. Three Psychological Models Figure 1: Three Psychological Models As you can see in the graphic, all three models assume that a person’s environment affects his behavior. However, there are variations in how the environment is defined as well as variations in how behavior is defined. Most notably, there are differences in how human consciousness is treated. Obviously (I hope it is obvious) we are treating each of these in an overly simplistic manner to highlight their differences. You can take multiple semesters worth of courses learning about each of these approaches and their variations (e.g. my Bachelors degree in criminal justice required every CJ major to take a senior level behaviorism course in psychology – why do you think our professors thought this would be important?). We are only scratching the surface to introduce variations in how psychology attempts to explain deviant behavior. I would encourage you to consider taking other psychology courses that are appropriate to your educational goals. Psychoanalytical psychology focuses on a “mentalistic” concept of the mind. This means that it treats the mind as a separate entity from the body. Philosophically, this is known as dualism the belief that self-consciousness exists separate from the biological body. It assumes that a person’s experiences in their environment affects the working of their mind (and various hypothesized components of the mind) which in turn affects their behavior. Note that the psychoanalytical is not opposed to brain-based psychology and brain science. Many traditionally trained psychologists utilize drug therapies for their patients, typically along with traditional talk therapies. Freud himself was trained in medicine, and thought that the brain was the seat of the mind; however, he did not have the technical ability (turn of the last century) to study the brain.  Behaviorism largely disregards the mind. The behaviorism approach (often referred to as learning theory) assumes that there is a direct relationship between the environment and behavior. It disregards “the mind” because that is not a measurable concept, and instead focuses solely on things that can be measured. In its earliest forms, behaviorism was based on rank empiricism -- it focused solely on physical environment and stimuli that could be confidently measured without regard to social and interpersonal stimuli (e.g. respect, love, kindness, etc.). Human consciousness is treated as a “black box” where stimuli are unconsciously matched with previous experiences of that stimuli and the subsequent history of reward or punishment (pleasure or pain). Behaviorism simply acknowledges that we don’t know how that matching takes place, then ignores it. Neuro-psychology – neuro-psych attempts to explain behavior based on biology. It focuses on the brain as the motor that drives all human behavior. It tends to accept the behaviorist focus on physical stimuli and activity, and it too rejects the dualist perspective. However, it focuses intensely on the mechanics of behavior and cognition as a physiological activity expressed via bio-electric signals, neuro-chemical signals, and physical changes in brain structure. The brain’s physical structure and operation is affected by evolution, genetics, physical stimuli, and learning. Psycho-analysis Freud Physician Focus on o Early childhood effects on personality o The Subconscious Freud is the founder of the psycho-analytic approach to psychology. As pointed out, he was trained in medicine. He was convinced that human personality and behavior was based on the brain, but science was not developed enough to explain the functioning of the brain. He believed that experiences in our childhood affected the development of our personality. Healthy minds progress through several stages of development at different ages and they develop balanced personality components. Freud had almost nothing to say about crime (“common wisdom” has it that he focused largely on middle-class housewives), but his theory has been applied to crime and deviance in terms of (1) Imbalance in personality components, and (2) Dysfunction occurring during developmental stages. The connection between developmental stages and personality components is beyond the scope of this course. If you’re interested, Freud’s work and explanations of it are widely available – check the library. Freud believed that significant events that affected people’s personalities occur during childhood, but those events are often repressed in the unconscious. Later in life, a psycho-analyst uses “talk therapy” to help the patient “free associate” – unload their memories – and hopefully succeed in drawing out the repressed memories that provide clues to the person’s problems. The individual can then deal with these underlying issues on a conscious basis. What are the Three Personality Components? ID – pleasure principle Super-ego – conscience – socialization Ego – reality principle – mediates id and superego ID – pleasure principle biological urges, especially sex but also including the others such as food and safety. The id is a person’s inborn motivation to fulfill their pleasures and survival instincts. Super-ego– conscience – socialization The super-ego is essentially the set of rules learned from our family, culture, society, etc. It can be thought of as the norms we learn through socialization that set limits on what we can do. It contains or blocks the desires of the id. Ego – reality principle – mediates id and superego The ego acts as a judge. It develops over time to balance the needs of the id and the restrictions of the super-ego. If healthy, it attempts to satisfy the id in socially acceptable manners. How would you explain criminal behavior from these three components? Very strong id Underdeveloped /overdeveloped superego Weak ego Very strong id: A very strong id would present a person who was very self-centered and had less self- control Underdeveloped superego: Would result in too little control over the normal passions of the id. The social rules of behavior would have less relevance to this person. Overdeveloped superego can also be a problem. This can result in a person who has repressed their normal urges to an unhealthy point – i.e. denial that they exist. This person may be very uptight, have problems being relaxed and having fun because they are constantly fearful of breaking a rule. It can be disastrous when it creates outbursts of passion that aren’t contained. Weak ego: A person with a weak ego recognizes their own desires and that there are social rules that govern those desires. But, they have poor social judgment. They try to fit in, but they have a strange social affect – difficulty relating to people in a normal way. We all know people who try to fit in to a group, but they have a penchant for saying or doing strange things based on the group context – they come across as “weird” or “immature”. Stages of Personality Development Oral (0-1) – mouth oriented Anal (1-3) – oriented to bowel control Phallic (3-5) – knowledge of genitals Sexual Latency (6-13) – sexual feelings repressed Genital (13 +) – sexual maturation Each of these stages relate to a phase of childhood development. Freud considered them all to be potentially sexual in nature (and most are overtly sexual in nature). They each relate to sources of pleasure at different stages of development. The age range limits in parentheses are variable approximations. Problems can occur during one of these stages of development as a child that affects the persons personality through life (unconsciously). If this occurs, the persons behavior later in life will somehow reflect this particular stage where they are “fixated”. Deviant and criminal behaviors will also reflect these kinds of characteristics. Also, deviant acts or thoughts that the person has during these stages may be a source of unresolved guilt that is repressed. Later, the person is unconsciously driven to deviance/crime that then provides a tangible basis for the unresolved guilt. They may unconsciously want to be caught and punished for earlier behavior. I’ll give you some hypothetical examples. Oral stage – associated with breast feeding and weaning; associated with pleasure gained through the mouth. deviant tendencies: use of the mouth to commit crimes: con artists, oral drugs, cannibalism Anal – associated with toilet training and learning how to control the bowels (as well as urination). Control is the operative term here. Pleasure is gained by maintaining order or control over things or people – the “anal retentive” person. deviant tendencies: theft Phallic – during this stage, individuals become aware of their genitals as sources of pleasure; simultaneously they begin to focus on their parents of the opposite sex. This can eventually lead to the Oedipus or Electra complexes (a son in love with his mother or a daughter in love with her father, respectively). Deviant tendencies: use of weapons such as guns, knives, or clubs; crimes targeting the parent of the opposite sex. Sexual Latency – sexual feelings are repressed – this is the stage where boys and girls don’t like each other. They tend to play with their own sex and avoid one another. Their play is more likely to be masculine and feminine respectively (boys playing with tractors and GI Joe, girls playing with Barbie and kitchens). Deviant tendencies: single sex gangs, crimes directed against the opposite sex. Before our current era of acceptance, most psychoanalysists might include homosexuality. Freud himself was not an advocate of classifying homosexuals as deviant but as a variant of normal sexual development. He credited an unresolved Oedipal complex in the Phallic stage for homosexuality. Note that the American Psychological Association (APA) voted to remove homosexuality from its list of psychological defects in the early 1970’s; and at this point in American culture, it is no longer considered deviant behavior. Genital – represents puberty -- sexual maturation. The stage when boys and girls become interested in one another and figure out how to relate to one another (hopefully in a healthy manner). Deviant tendencies: use of prostitutes, cheating on a mate, bigamy, rape Freudian CrimeTheorists August Aichorn o Wayward Youth (1925) o Undeveloped superego – due to too much or too little parental love o Criminal superego Healy and Bronner o New Lights on Delinquency (1936) o “Genuine Criminal” (no superego) Aichorn hypothesized that delinquency is a disease of the personality and the delinquent behaviors were merely symptoms of the underlying disease (mental conflict). He called the delinquent personality (or potential for delinquency) latent delinquency, and the delinquent actions as manifest delinquency. The delinquent personality was typically due to an underdeveloped superego – the person did not internalize social rules of behavior – due to too much or too little parental love. Another path was through the development of what Aichorn labeled a “criminal superego”. This was created when a person was raised in a criminal household, in a criminal group or  culture, or if their father was a criminal. Essentially, this kind of criminal learned a different set of rules about what was right and wrong. Their superego developed in a healthy manner, but the social rules they learned, were different from most of society and the law. In both cases, there was a LACK OF GUILT → this is a direct departure from Freud’s original idea that guilt drove much of the acting out behaviors, neuroses, etc. Healy and Bronner describe different types of criminals including the genuine criminal. This kind of person never developed a superego and so they live by id impulses alone. Psychoanalytic approach is a clinical approach that focuses on the experiences of individual people. Some published case examples are these: Aichorn relates one case in which a 17 year old boy repetitively steals denatured alcohol from this father’s shop, then urinates in the bottles. This was concluded to be a symbolic theft with Oedipal motivation because the boy wanted the affection of his stepmother. Similarly, Alexander and Healy point out the repeated thefts by a boy as actually being motivated by a repressed sexual desire for his mother. And Friedlander believed that a 7 year old boys’s constant fights, cruelty to animals, exhibitionism and truancy was due to an imperfect superego and unconscious oedipal conflict. Additional Psychoanalysts of Crime These are not testable, but if you’re interested in further reading … Friedlander o Psychoanalytical Approaches to Juvenile Delinquency (1947) Eissler o Searchlights on Delinquency (1949) Redl and Wineman o Children Who Hate (1951) Note how old these works are. Freudian psychology has lost much of its appeal as a scientific theory because it is largely untestable. As one scholar pointed out, you are more likely to read Freud in an English class than in a psychology class. Adaptive Unconscious Examples of current research ideas that utilize the concept of the subconscious Although Freudian psychology is considered suspect because of its lack of scientific rigor, Freud is still considered an excellent observer of clinical ideas. His approach to explaining the roots of behavior still affects psychological work today. One example is research on the “adaptive unconscious”. Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle of Higher Education, July 4, 2003 by Timothy Wilson: As a brilliant observer of clinical phenomena, Freud scrutinized dreams, fantasies, and free association in ways that no one had before. But to research psychologists, clinical observation hardly qualifies as a scientific method, whereby hypotheses are tested (and potentially falsified) with techniques that can be reproduced in other laboratories. Psychoanalysts and academic researchers in psychology have had little to say to each other because of this basic disagreement about the rules of inquiry. At most universities, Freud's works are more likely to be assigned in English courses than in psychology courses.  In recent years, though, academic psychologists have increasingly turned their attention to the nature of unconscious thinking and have explored some of the same territory that so fascinated Freud. Those advances have occurred largely because of the development of powerful laboratory techniques to study unconscious thinking. Some of Freud's ideas have been verified, at least in a general sense -- for example, the notion that people possess unconscious defensive processes that protect their self-esteem. But modern researchers have discovered a sophisticated, powerful unconscious quite different from the one he imagined. Although Freud "put the unconscious on the map," in his granddaughter Sophie's words, his view of an infantile, primitive unconscious has proved to be far too limited. Humans possess a powerful set of psychological processes that are critical for survival and operate behind the conscious mental scene. Those processes, called the "adaptive unconscious," are intimately involved in how we size up our world, perceive danger, initiate action, and set our goals. It is the unconscious that allows us to learn our native language with no conscious effort, recognize patterns in our environments while we think about something else, and develop reliable intuitions to guide our actions. Two potential examples of how the unconscious may be of use in criminal justice is found in some news clippings I have. One refers to officers who demonstrate stronger, more accurate “police intuition” than other officers. One theory is that some people (and some police officers) see very small actions or behaviors that is perceived on a preconscious level but that they cannot articulate and that most officers don’t observe on any level. Another article refers to research on people who are much better at spotting liars than most other people. Criminal Personality Theory Yochelson and Samenow Thinking Errors, due to common traits including o High self-esteem/superiority complex o Enjoys of risks o Overly Optimistic about outcomes o Chronic Lying Stanton Samenow is one of the best known cognitive psychologists who focused on delinquent behavior. Although there may be certain inborn characteristics, a child’s environment can affect how these predispositions are expressed. In delinquent kids, Samenow has found certain prevalent “thinking errors” the lead to decisions for criminal conduct rather than against it. He though that these children were born with certain flawed thinking patterns that were increased by their environment. These patterns of personality predisposed them to criminal behavior. This focus on “thinking errors”, flawed predictions of future events and consequences, are at the heart of some of the more successful rehabilitation counseling programs used in at-risk and criminal populations. These “cognitive-behavioral therapies” attempt to teach better decision making skills and avoidance techniques. Psychopathology Theory Schizophrenia Psychopathy Both of these disorders are often believed to lead to criminal behavior. It is true that many people with these diseases wind up in the criminal justice system. Essentially, schizophrenia results in a person believing they see and hear things that are not there and they react to that perceived but not real environment. If you are a police officer on the street, you will deal with quite a few people with schizophrenia when they get “off their meds”. Some of them will be involved in serious crimes, most will be more of a nuisance engaged in minor offenses and behavior management problems for their family. So we do not consider it a major factor in serious victimization. You need to begin preparing yourself to work with this population. It takes a great deal of sympathy and care, but also a great deal of situational awareness and judicious use of defensive tactics. Three Vignettes of Police Officer Contact with Schizophrenics A mom and her daughter call 911 to say that their son & brother is threatening them with a baseball bat. Police officer arrives. They are standing out in the middle of the front yard. The male suspect has “mental issues” and is “off his meds”. He “tried to hit us with the bat”. He is in the house with the bat. Because he is threatening people, he can legally be “arrested” and transported to a secure psychiatric facility for an Emergency Commitment (EC). What do you do? At 2:00 a.m., a citizen calls 911 about a woman walking down the street screaming and yelling at the top of her lungs and “talking crazy”. The officer responds, finds the subject, determines that she is having hallucinations, but is not endangering herself or anyone else. There is no crime beyond violation of a noise ordinance. So he does not intervene. An hour later, a citizen calls 911 from a nearby block about a woman streaming blood in the middle of the street. The same officer arrives to find the same woman. She has broken a beer bottle and cut herself to shreds trying to “get the worms out”. She needs medical care and an EC. What do you do? At 1:00 a.m. a woman calls 911, frantic, complaining that she is scared of her sister who won’t leave her house. Please help! An officer arrives at the house, knocks on the door. The woman opens the door, drags the officer into the house and demands that he take away her sister. “Where is she?”, he asks. “Right there!”, she responds. No one else was in the house. Her sister had died a number of years previously. What do you do? Note that each of these vignettes is a true event. Two of them presented a clear and present danger to the officer to intervene. But of course, if things go south, and this person is injured, or killed, who will be blamed? People often expect the police to have a Magic Wand from Diagon Alley and a Hogwarts Stupefy spell or some other imaginary intervention. The same family members who called 911 and demanded that the officer do something will demand your arrest and sue you if you hurt their “gentle sick son”. In the first case, and there are others, there has clearly been a crime committed. Working in the criminal justice system, you will quickly find out that the deinstitutionalization movement has essentially moved a substantial amount of our national mental health problem out of mental hospitals and into the streets, then our jails and prisons. Psychopaths are people without natural empathy for other people. Although they are portrayed as serial killers in movies, TV, and books, most psychopaths are fairly normal people, except they really don’t care about other people. This lack of caring makes it easier for them to victimize others and more likely to become criminals. Research has demonstrate that they are more likely to be engaged in both violent crime and property crimes. On the other hand, social conditioning may have a huge effect on the direction that psychopathy takes. For example, a person who does not have empathy toward others may have niche “jobs” in society in which their psychopathic traits help them succeed. An article in Businessinsider.com listed likely careers for psychopaths including surgeon, salesperson, journalists, lawyers, and CEOs. Just to use the CEO as an example, imagine how much easier it is to fire 100 people and replace them with robots if you have not empathy for those employees or their families.  Note, while your author takes time to distinguish theoretically between psychopaths and sociopaths, there does not appear to be sufficient research to objectively distinguish between one and the other. Presumably, a child who is raised in a healthy environment, but then acts out in a pattern consistent with antisocial personality disorder, would be considered a psychopath. But if that child were raised in a poor environment with a great deal of trauma, how could you know if it was psychopathy or sociopathy? For our purposes in this class, you need not know any greater depth of this distinction. Cognitive Psychology “I wish we understood the brain.” Cognitive psychologists focus on information processing – how we observe, learn, think, and organize information. According to Earle (1992), cognitive psychology largely developed as a reaction to the over- simplicity of behaviorism. Most cognitive psychologists lean toward neuro-psychology as the ultimate resolution, but they recognize that neuro-science has not advanced enough to answer the questions that they pose. So Cognitive psychology uses mentalistic concepts and draws from all three major models of psychology, but it does not rely on only one of them. A behaviorist (which we will study next) assumes that the same stimuli will have the same effect on different individuals. Cognitive psychology brings mentalistic concepts such as personality back into the inquiry because they believe that individuals are different and that the same stimuli on different individuals will bring about different results. How individuals are different is in their minds – their cognitive abilities. Essentially, it tries to understand how our mind works, so it attempts to model the processes that go on in our mind. What is normal? How do those processes change over time (especially during the developmental period)? How do we learn language? What is intelligence and how is it measured? How do we learn morals? How do we advance to more sophisticated ways of thinking? Etc. etc. Kohlberg’s Theory of Ethical Development Kohlberg’s theory is not a theory of crime, so much as it’s a theory of anti-crime: conforming behavior and beyond that to ethically superior behavior. It does provide one example of a cognitive based theory that can be related to criminology. Although we won’t spend a great deal of time on cognitive theory, there are a couple of points that we can make about it. Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. He essentially followed Piaget’s theory of cognitive development of children. Piaget believed that children had a natural progression of language and cognitive abilities. These abilities were biologically ready to develop, but they had to have appropriate stimulation from other people, playing, etc. to fully develop. Early in their development, they could only conceive of concrete items that were visible to them. As they develop, they develop more abstract ideas (concepts about things that are not tangible). Kohlberg applied that idea to children’s moral development. He posited that they develop in stages. In the early stages, they are essentially self-centered. Later, they are oriented toward the will of their significant others, then to the will of their social group, then the law. Higher order ethical thinking is achieved by some people in which they apply ethical principles to their behaviors as well as to the law itself. In Kohlberg’s view, children needed to be exposed to moral conflict and encouraged to see other people’s views in order for them to develop higher order ethical abilities. This differs from a behaviorist perspective in that behaviorism would support exposing a person to very consistent behavior/reward contingency.  “Wrong” thought would be punished, or at least ignored, but certainly would not be rewarded. Some people do not have the opportunity to learn more advanced ethical reasoning. Those that do not move beyond the lower levels will tend to be self- centered, or focused only on the good of their immediate family, without regard to what the greater society may think. Intelligence & IQ All theories of crime are debated. But some bring out higher levels of emotion and conflict. At the top of that list are biological theories. Close behind it are intelligence theories. These theories are linked to the hereditary theories of the feebleminded discussed earlier. There is debate over whether intelligence is a single construct or if there are multiple intelligences (Gardner’s Theory). Intelligence Quotient scores are based on standardized intelligence tests that focus on a single facet of intelligence, or a narrow band of intelligence, including linear, mathematical, and spatial reasoning. They don’t measure hypothesized concepts such as emotional intelligence or artistic intelligence (if those exist – I tend to think they do in some form, but empirical research support seems sketchy). We do know that IQ scores are consistently correlated to criminal records and delinquent behavior. The correlations are modest, but consistent. In fact, IQ may be the single most consistent predictor variable in crime research. At this point, it is impossible to dismiss that connection. The questions that remain have to do with what exactly is the causal link? And what does it mean for public policy? It is widely believed that the IQ/Crime link is INDIRECT in causation. That is, low IQ causes problems in completing school, getting good jobs, fulfilling unrealistic dreams (creating frustration), lowering control of immediate gratification, etc. All of these elements then establish circumstances making it more likely for a person to be engaged in delinquent and criminal behavior. Note that there are plenty of criminals with high IQ’s. E.g. the criminals who ran Enron. Many known serial killers have had high IQs as well. In fact, among psychopathic criminals, there is some evidence that those with higher IQs also tend to commit more violent crimes. But, that is a very small percentage of the population. Remember that IQ/Crime correlations are stronger when using official records for the crime measure than if you use self-report data. This would seem to indicate that the smarter offenders are less likely to get caught, thus the observed correlation may be weaker in the entire population of people. Another question about IQ is whether it is fixed or changeable? The original theory of IQ was that it was fixed either at birth or in early childhood. Listen to this radio story from NPR Morning Edition, 10-20-11 to see what new evidence seems to be showing. This is a journalistic piece from National Public Radio covering a study that developed evidence that IQ test scores can fluctuate quite a bit later in life that has been thought in the past. This is in contrast to the original, and common view that IQ is established at birth or early childhood and remains virtually unchanged (or fixed) after that. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/10/20/141511314/iq-isnt-set-in-stone-suggests-study-that- finds-big-jumps-dips-in-teens