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June 24, 1969. SOME SUPEREGO CONSIDERATIONS IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Stuart S. Asch, M.D.
Dr. Asch reviews criminal acts and criminals, and discusses the various aims of legal punishment and its effectiveness. Consideration is limited to normal and neurotic characters and to those with severe superego defects; the psychotic criminal is not dealt with in his paper. He criticizes the naïve belief that a fully developed, stable superego insures the 'normal' adult against committing crimes. Superego restrictions may be evaded by several routes, as through group action or through displacement of responsibility away from the self onto an outer agency. Some antisocial acts result from intrapsychic conflict. A strict, inflexible superego is also an unreliable bulwark against antisocial impulses and may itself be the stimulus for antisocial behavior, as with 'criminals from a sense of guilt'. However, in the majority of criminals defective superego development may underlie the antisocial acts. Two major ego defects also tend to characterize