You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Before outlining a few of the many intriguing issues which emerge from Dr. Asch's perceptive analysis of the nature of crimes and the functions and consequences of punishment, I find it important to mention several other of his provocative ideas which should be researched more fully: Antisocial acts focus and externalize guilt by giving an undefinable inner tension a label, a structure, and a rational source outside the guilty individual; external punishment provided by prisons and social institutions may have an effect opposite to that intended by absolving the individual of any need for self-generated punishment; and laws are intended to protect both the “ego” and “superego,” as well as “society.”
For me, two central concerns relevant to the ideas expressed here are (1) the dispositional versus situational attribution for crime and antisocial acts, and (2) the general preference for punishment over reward across a variety of “training” situations, despite the demonstrated superiority of reinforcement for modifying behavior.
John Stuart Mill (1848) cautions us that “of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of social and moral influence on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.” Personality-trait theorists and some psychoanalytic thinking has given support to the
popular notion that the place to look for “evil” is within evil people; the locus for antisocial behavior is to be found in the character structure (or lack of it) of the deviant, in weak or too-severe superegos, in high F people, etc. To the average person, as well as to our legislators and correctional personnel, the dispositional hypothesis is appealing because it places the responsibility for evil not upon them (society), but solely upon the individuals in question. The solution to the problem of antisocial behavior then need not involve extensive reordering of social, political, or economic prio