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Russian Journal of Deviant Behavior
Journals / Russian Journal of Deviant Behavior / Volume 5 Issue 2 / Psychoanalysis of criminal personality: revising the approach and assessing the prospects for its application
VAK Russia 5.3.9 UDC 159.9 UDC 316.624

PSYCHOANALYSIS OF CRIMINAL PERSONALITY: REVISING THE APPROACH AND ASSESSING THE PROSPECTS FOR ITS APPLICATION Psychoanalysis of criminal personality: revising the approach and assessing the prospects for its application

Published in Russian Journal of Deviant Behavior · Volume 5, Issue 2 · Pages 204–223 · Rubric: Methodology for studying deviant behavior
DOI: https://doi.org/10.35750/2713-0622-2025-2-204-223
Received: 11.02.2025 Accepted: 28.03.2025 Published: 28.07.2025 Language of publication: RUS
Authors
YU Yury Antonyan
Yury Antonyan
ORCID
KI Kirill Zlokazov
Kirill Zlokazov
ORCID Scopus ResearcherID Scholar SPIN
ABSTRACT
The relevance of the research is determined by the need to develop the methodology of criminal psychology, to increase its sensitivity to the individual characteristics shaping criminal personality and, as a consequence, to improve the quality of diagnostic and correctional work with criminogenic individuals. The theory of psychoanalysis originates in the highly controversial assumption of a deep mental life remaining unconscious to its subject, but driving a person to commit a crime. With no sufficient experimental confirmation, psychoanalytical ideas are realised in psychological approaches concerning the study of offenders and criminals, thus demonstrating their heuristic potential. The purpose of the research is to determine the validity of psychoanalytic theory of personality and its methodology for improving criminal psychology. Methods. The research is based on a set of general scientific methods of working with information – analysis and synthesis are applied to psychoanalytic structure of personality and functions of its components that determine criminal and law-abiding behaviour. The method of generalisation is used to identify psychoanalytical ideas and concepts of criminal personality, that are of interest for developing criminal psychology and that require experimental verification. Results. Psychoanalytical ideas on the structure of criminal personality are analysed. Drawing upon foreign studies, the author examines the researchers’ ideas on unconscious instincts driving a person to commit a crime, as well as intrapersonal mechanisms restraining and regulating their exteriorisation. Criticism of neurotic, infantile and psychotic concepts of criminal personality by the followers of Z. Freud is provided. The functions and states of personality components counteracting antisocial and criminal impulses of the unconscious are revealed; the information on their empirical verification is detailed. The psychoanalytic interpretation of a person’s anxiety preceding a crime, and the guilt following its comission is described. The result of the research is a generalisation of functions and states of intrapersonal structures that regulate unlawful acts and foster lawabiding behaviour. The findings are of practical importance for the development of diagnostic methods, models of psychocorrective and psychopreventive work, involving their experimental verification.
KEYWORDS
criminal psychoanalysis, criminal personality, unconscious motives, irrational aggression, serial crimes, criminal psychology
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