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Dr. Asch is to be commended for this worthwhile effort to delineate the different qualities of criminal acts as committed by different character types. He reminds us of the arduous course toward “mature” superego development and of the ever-present regressive process threatening psychic equilibrium. His idea that normal superego processes require external “nutriment” reminds me of Erikson's concept of ego virtue: that each phase of ego development requires external validation for optimal consolidation of the particular ego “virtue” or strength. Dr. Asch calls our attention to the vulnerability of ego and superego processes to narcissistic regressive disorganization, and to how important are our relations with the external world for the maintenance of psychic balance and integration.
His comments about the effect of imprisonment—the debasement, demoralization, and dehumanization of the individual—are all too true. During my legal efforts with respect to confidentiality some years ago, I was held in contempt of court and had to spend three days in a fairly modern county jail in California. Although I was in no way personally abused during my imprisonment, I must say that the ordinary person cannot grasp the profound humiliation, the forces toward total obliteration of one's personal identity, that begin to work immediately as one passes through the locked steel doors.
Freedom is totally lost, and one is completely at the mercy of anonymous, indifferent guards. Whatever system of enlightened punishment or imprisonment may be devised in the future, the human worth of every prisoner must be nurtured no matter how serious his crime.
Which leads to the dilemma of punishment. Here I think Freud's cautionary remarks should be recalled. As Strachey puts it: “… he wrote to deprecate any half-baked application of psychoanalytic theories in legal proceedings.” I agree
that long imprisonment for convicted persons with normal or neurotic superegos will do more harm to them and to