Short notes on psychiatric explanation (Criminology)

Psychiatry is such a field of medicine which specialises in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental problems. It postulates that each person is a unique personality and it can be understood by means of a thorough or diagnostic case study.

The study includes family environment, relationships in the family, neighbourhood, school history, childhood diseases, work experiences, conduct on the job, and so on.

William Healy (The Individual Delinquent, 1915), a psychiatrist in Chicago, disagreeing with his physician colleagues that juvenile delinquency is caused by defective organism or anatomical factors emphasised personality defects and disorders, or ‘psychogenic traits’ as the cause of crime.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

In broader terms, psychogenic traits cause those ways of behaviour which are established in the infant or the young child through emotional interaction within the family.

These traits refer to extroversion or introversion, dominance or submission, optimism or pessimism, emotional independence or dependence, self-confidence or its absence, egocentrism or sociocentrism, and so on 0ohnson, 1978: 155).

In narrower terms, however, the term ‘psychogenic’ is referred to as the ‘mental factor or disorders’ or ’emotional disturbances’. Analysing psychological factors, Healy found a greater frequency of personality disorders among delinquents than among non-delinquents.

In 1935, Healy and Bronner enunciated their theory, based on case studies of 1,953 delinquents in three cities, that delinquency was purposive behaviour that resulted when children met frustration in their attempts to fulfill some of their basic drives, such as, the need for secure social relations both inside and outside the family for recognition, for freedom and so forth.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

They found in their study that delinquents had a higher frequency of personality defect and disorder, like illness, neurosis, food idiosyncrasies, dislike of school, too much liking for movies and so forth.

Healy’s explanation runs like this: Frustration of the individual cause’s emotional discomfort, personality equilibrium demands removal of such pain; the pain is eliminated by substitute behaviour, i.e., delinquency.

In order to treat the individual, we must subject him to a thorough examination, utilising physical, mental, sociological, and psychiatric analysis for this purpose. This constitutes “case study of the individual in its most highly developed form”.

Psychiatrists have given three types of mental disorders or psychoses (that is, individuals manifesting severe decompression, distortion of reality and loss of contact with reality): (i) schizophrenia (exhibiting tendency to retreat from reality through delusions and hallucinations), (ii) manic-depressive disorder (exhibiting fluctuations in mood), and (iii) paranoia.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Evaluating mental disorders in delinquency, it was estimated that only 1.5 per cent to 2.0 per cent criminals are psychotic, of which the schizophrenic is the most common among such offenders. This indicates methodological errors in Healy’s research; hence its inadequacy.

A study of 10,000 felons in New York between 1932 and 1935 also pointed out that only 1.5 per cent were psychotic, 6.9 per cent were psycho-neurotic, 6.9 per cent were psychopathic and 2.4 per cent were feeble-minded.

Thus, 82.3 per cent of offenders were diagnosed as ‘normal’. Another study of Paul Schilder (Journal of Criminal Psychopathology, October, 1940: 152) in 1937 in New York pointed out that 83.8 per cent offenders were ‘normal’.

Dunham’s (1939: 352-61) study of 500 males in Illinois hospital showed that schizophrenia is a negligible factor in the causation of crime. Thus, all these investigations show that the psychiatric theory has proved untenable (Bromberg and Thompson, 1939: 70-89).

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Other deficiencies, different from the serious methodological errors, have also been pointed out in Healy’s researches:

(1) His samples were small and unrepresentative.

(2) His terms were either not defined or vaguely defined; for example, ‘normal emotional control’, ‘good living conditions’, ‘stable home’, etc. How are these factors to be measured?

(3) Research failed to explain why some children who had the traits believed to be characteristic of delinquents did not become delinquents and why some children who did not have those traits became delinquents.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

(4) They do not explain why one sibling becomes a delinquent and the other does not. We, therefore, conclude that psychiatric theory stands rejected.