Discussion of Stuart S. Asch's Article, Some Superego Considerations in Crime and Punishment

I congratulate Dr. Asch on a very fine paper and extend my warm thanks to him, because I agree that psychoanalysts have paid too little attention to issues of crime and punishment. It is important for us to consider these areas for two reasons, of mutually reverberating significance. One, as members of society we have an obligation to contribute what we can from the vantage point of our discipline to the understanding and remedying of society's problems. Two, our general psychoanalytic theory and practice will be enriched as we study the superego in relationship to the other intrapsychic agencies,

and the meaning of crime and punishment from a psychoanalytic viewpoint.

In his paper, Dr. Asch has made two significant contributions: he has reviewed much psychoanalytic literature and thinking on the subjects of crime and punishment, and, using material from a broad variety of sources and contributing his own considerations, he has come to certain tentative conclusions regarding deterrents and punishment. In moving toward conclusions in such a relatively uncharted field for psychoanalysts, Dr. Asch risks (and probably invites) dissenting viewpoints. I hope he will respond to my further observations with the knowledge that, although they are at variance with some of his ideas, they were stimulated by his good work.

I feel that an issue Dr. Asch has not sufficiently considered is this: “Crime” may be a positive adaptational response to the vicissitues which a particular society offers to a particular individual. Much of the psychoanalytic theory which Dr. Asch quotes and then uses in his further formulations have a distinctly middle- and upper-class bias. What do I mean by this? The subjects who came to be analyzed and the analysts who did the analyzing and then wrote psychoanalytic theory were all middle-class people; and more important even than their social class was the fact that they were “winners” in the world of their day (even as most analysts and analysands are