Antisocial Behavior Seen from Psychoanalysis

Antisocial behavior refers to actions that harm or disregard the rights of others, including behaviors that are manipulative, deceitful, violent, or violating social norms. While this type of behavior is often associated with conditions like antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), psychoanalysis offers a unique perspective on its origins and underlying psychological dynamics. According to psychoanalytic theory, antisocial behavior can be understood as a result of deep-rooted unconscious conflicts, defense mechanisms, and unresolved emotional issues. This article explores antisocial behavior from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, focusing on its causes, characteristics, and potential therapeutic approaches.

What is Antisocial Behavior?

Antisocial behavior encompasses a wide range of actions that violate the rights of others and society’s rules. It can be seen in actions such as:

• Deceptive behaviors (lying, cheating)
• Aggression (verbal or physical abuse)
• Manipulation (using others for personal gain)
• Lack of empathy or remorse (indifference toward harming others)
• Disregard for social rules or laws

These behaviors can manifest in various contexts, from personal relationships to professional settings, and often lead to significant disruptions in a person’s life and the lives of those around them. While antisocial behavior is often linked with certain personality disorders, psychoanalysis delves deeper into the unconscious mind to explain the psychodynamic factors that contribute to these behaviors.

Psychoanalysis and Antisocial Behavior

Psychoanalysis, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, seeks to understand human behavior through the lens of unconscious thoughts, desires, and childhood experiences. From a psychoanalytic perspective, antisocial behavior is a manifestation of deep-seated emotional and psychological conflicts, often rooted in early development. Psychoanalysts believe that these behaviors are not merely “bad” actions but reflect unresolved inner struggles and the way an individual has learned to cope with emotional pain.

1. The Role of Childhood Experiences

Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the significance of early childhood experiences in shaping behavior later in life. According to Freud, much of an individual’s unconscious drives and defense mechanisms are formed during the first few years of life. If a child experiences neglect, abuse, or inconsistent caregiving, they may develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage feelings of fear, anger, or frustration. These early experiences can contribute to antisocial tendencies, as the individual may lack the emotional tools to connect with others in a healthy way.

For example, a child who is frequently neglected or abused may learn to suppress emotional vulnerability as a defense against feelings of helplessness. This emotional suppression can manifest as a lack of empathy or an inability to form meaningful, trusting relationships with others. In adulthood, this emotional detachment may present itself as antisocial behavior.

2. Unconscious Drives and Defense Mechanisms

In psychoanalysis, unconscious drives (such as aggressive urges or sexual desires) are thought to influence behavior, often in ways that an individual is not aware of. These drives may become repressed if they conflict with societal norms or personal values. However, when these repressed urges are not adequately managed, they can emerge as destructive behaviors, such as antisocial actions.

For example, Freud’s concept of the id represents the primal, instinctual drives within a person. When the id is overly dominant and unchecked by the superego (the internalized societal rules and morals), antisocial behavior can result. This may manifest in impulsivity, recklessness, or a total disregard for others’ rights.

Moreover, defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that people use to cope with anxiety and inner conflict. Some individuals with antisocial tendencies may employ mechanisms like projection, where they attribute their own negative traits (such as selfishness or aggression) to others, or rationalization, where they justify harmful actions by making excuses for their behavior. These defense mechanisms can help the individual avoid confronting the underlying emotional pain that fuels their antisocial behavior.

3. The Role of the Ego and Superego

According to psychoanalytic theory, the ego plays a crucial role in balancing the instinctual desires of the id with the moral constraints of the superego. When this balance is disrupted, antisocial behavior may emerge. Individuals with a weak or underdeveloped superego may have difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong, leading to actions that disregard the welfare of others.

In some cases, the ego may develop in a way that promotes self-centeredness and detachment, preventing the individual from developing empathy or understanding for others. This lack of moral development can contribute to behaviors associated with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), which is characterized by persistent patterns of disregard for others’ rights and societal norms.

Characteristics of Antisocial Behavior from a Psychoanalytic Viewpoint

From a psychoanalytic perspective, individuals with antisocial behavior typically exhibit several common traits, including:

1. Lack of Empathy

One of the defining characteristics of antisocial behavior is a lack of empathy. These individuals struggle to recognize or care about the emotional experiences of others. This emotional detachment may be rooted in early childhood experiences of emotional neglect or trauma. If a child is not nurtured or validated by caregivers, they may learn to suppress their emotions and fail to develop the capacity for empathy.

2. Impulsivity

Antisocial individuals often act without considering the consequences of their actions. This impulsivity can stem from a failure to internalize moral standards during childhood development, leading to reckless behavior in adulthood. From a psychoanalytic perspective, impulsivity may also be a defense mechanism used to avoid emotional pain or inner conflict.

3. Difficulty with Relationships

Because of their inability to empathize with others and their tendency to manipulate situations for personal gain, individuals with antisocial behavior often struggle to form and maintain meaningful relationships. Their relationships may be superficial or exploitative, as they view others as tools to fulfill their own desires rather than as individuals with their own needs and emotions.

4. Disregard for Social Norms

Antisocial individuals consistently break social rules and laws. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, this behavior is often seen as an expression of the individual’s internal conflict with authority and societal expectations. The individual may be rebelling against perceived injustices in their early life or may have developed a warped sense of entitlement and superiority.

5. Blaming Others

Rather than taking responsibility for their actions, individuals with antisocial tendencies often engage in blame-shifting. This is a defense mechanism that allows them to avoid guilt or shame for their harmful behavior. By projecting their negative traits onto others, they are able to maintain a sense of control and avoid facing their own flaws.

Treatment of Antisocial Behavior in Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic treatment for antisocial behavior aims to help individuals understand the unconscious conflicts and repressed emotions that contribute to their harmful actions. The goal of psychoanalysis is to bring these unconscious feelings to the surface, where they can be examined, processed, and integrated in a healthy way. This process involves several key components:

1. Exploring Early Childhood Experiences

Psychoanalysts believe that much of an individual’s antisocial behavior stems from unresolved emotional issues in childhood. By exploring these early experiences in therapy, individuals can gain insight into how their behaviors developed and how they can begin to heal. This often involves working through past traumas, including abuse or neglect, and reprocessing painful emotions.

2. Addressing Unconscious Drives and Defense Mechanisms

Through techniques like free association and dream analysis, psychoanalysts help individuals uncover the unconscious drives and defense mechanisms that influence their behavior. By bringing these unconscious elements into consciousness, the individual can begin to challenge the distorted thinking patterns that support antisocial tendencies.

3. Developing Empathy and Emotional Regulation

Psychoanalytic therapy also focuses on helping individuals develop empathy and emotional regulation. By exploring their own emotions and learning to connect with the feelings of others, individuals can begin to change their behavior and build healthier relationships.

Violent behavior from Psychoanalysis

In today’s day we will review the psychoanalytic approach of some of the most significant figures of psychoanalysis regarding antisocial behavior, to try to shed some light on this complex issue.

Sigmund Freud

The father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud tried to study criminals by dividing them into two categories, mainly:

A) Guilt-based offenders

In 1915, Freud published an article in which he declared that, paradoxical as it may seem, these criminals have a feeling of guilt prior to the crime so he comes to the conclusion that the consummation of his act represents, for the criminal subject, a psychological relief linked to the need to mitigate the previous guilt. In other words, by committing the crime the subject satisfies a need for self-punishment coming from an unconscious feeling of guilt (and which, according to him, comes from the primary guilt in the Oedipus complex: killing the father to keep the mother).

For Freud, guilt is the ambivalent manifestation of the life and death instincts since guilt would come from the tensions between the superego and the id that manifest themselves in a latent need to be punished. He also clarifies that only guilt does not surface in the conscious field but is often repressed in the unconscious.

B) Criminals without feelings of guilt

They are subjects who have not developed moral inhibitions or believe their behavior is justified due to their fight against society (psychopathic and psychopathological personalities) with a marked weakening of the superego, or with an ego structure incapable of preserving the aggressive impulses and sadistic tendencies in the id through defense mechanisms.

He also adds two essential traits as characteristics of the criminal: egocentrism and a destructive tendency, but he also says that in all men there is a natural or aggressive disposition due to narcissism.

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler was one of the first students and first dissident of Freud’s theories, creator of the so-called individual psychology. It shapes all of his work based on three main postulates: feelings of inferiority, impulses of power and the community feelings. For him, feelings of community are what attenuate feelings of inferiority (which are also congenital and universal) and control impulses of power.

Adler emphasizes that a strong feeling of inferiority, the aspiration for personal superiority and a deficient sense of community are always recognizable in the phase preceding the deviation of behavior. Besides, antisocial activity that is directed against others is acquired early by those children who fall into the erroneous opinion that all others can be considered objects of their belonging. Their dangerous behavior will depend on the degree of feeling for the community. The delinquent, according to Adler, has a conviction of his own superiority, a subsequent and compensatory consequence of his inferiority from early childhood.

Theodor Reik

Theodor Reik dedicated much of his theory and research to criminal behavior. An example of this is his book The psychoanalysis of the criminalwhere Reik emphasizes that there must be joint work between psychoanalysts and criminologists to clarify the criminal acts, expressing that one of the most effective means to discover the anonymous criminal is to specify the motive for the crime.

He pointed out that the criminal act must be the expression of the individual’s mental tension, arising from his mental state to constitute the promised satisfaction of his psychological needs. According to psychoanalytic concepts, projection mechanisms exist in crimes: the criminal flees from his own consciousness as he would from an external enemy, projecting this internal enemy outward. Under such pressure, the criminal self struggles in vain and the criminal becomes careless and betrays himself in a kind of mental compulsion, making mistakes that have actually been determined by the unconscious.

An example of this would be the inability of a subject not to leave traces of himself but on the contrary, leaving clues at the crime scene. Another example that makes clear the unknown desire of the self to surrender to justice would be the return of criminals to the scene of the crime.

Alexander and Staub

For these authors every man is innately a criminal and his adaptation to society begins after the victory over the Oedipus complex. Thus, while a normal individual manages in the latency period to repress the genuine criminal tendencies of his impulses and sublimate them towards a pro-social sense, the criminal fails in this adaptation.

It states that the neurotic and the criminal have failed in their ability to resolve the problem of their relationships with the family in a social sense. While the neurotic externalizes symbolically and through hysterical symptoms, the criminal manifests himself through his criminal behavior. A characteristic of all neurotics and most criminals is the incomplete incorporation of the superego.

Sandor Ferenczi

Sandor Ferenczi observed through the psychoanalysis of various anarchist criminals that the Oedipus complex was still in full evolution, that is to say, that it had not yet been resolved and that his actions symbolically represented a displaced revenge against primitive tyranny. Or oppressor of his parent. He finds that the criminal can never really explain what was committed, since it is and will always be incomprehensible to him. The reasons he gives for his misdeeds are always complex rationalizations.

For Sandor, personality is made up of three elements: instinctive me, real me and social self (similar to the second Freudian topic: id, ego and superego) when the instinctive ego predominates in the subject, Ferenczi says that he is a genuine criminal; If the real self is weak, delinquency takes on a neurotic character and when the expressed weakness centers on the hypertrophy of the social self, crimes arise as a result of a feeling of guilt.

Karl Abraham

Freud’s disciple, Karl Abraham argues that individuals with delinquent characteristics are fixed in the first oral sadistic stage: individuals with aggressive traits governed by the pleasure principle (as we shared in a previous article, antisocial personalities tend to project traits of oral aggressiveness in the Machover human figure test).

He also pointed out similarities between war and totemic festivals based on the works of his teacher, as the entire community comes together to do things that are absolutely forbidden to the individual. Finally, it should be noted that Abraham carried out numerous investigations to try to understand criminal perversions.

Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein found that children with social and antisocial tendencies were the most fearful of possible retaliation from their parents as punishment. She came to the conclusion that it is not the weakness of the superego, but the overwhelming severity of this is responsible for the characteristic behavior of asocial and criminal people. As a result of the unreal projection of their fears and persecutory fantasies in the early sadistic phase against their parents.

When the child manages to disassociate the unreal and destructive imago that the child projects to his parents and the process of social adaptation begins through the introjection of values ​​and desires to repay the projected aggressive fantasies, the more the tendency to correct his guilt for the false image he had of his parents and his creative capacity grows, the more the superego is appeased; but in cases where as a result of strong sadism and destructive tendencies the strong superego structure prevails, there will be a strong and overwhelming anxiety about which the individual may feel compelled to destroy or kill. We see here that the same psychological roots of personality can develop into paranoia or criminality.

Jacques Lacan

Without a doubt, Jacques Lacan is the most prominent figure in current psychoanalysis. What interested Lacan most in terms of criminological topics were the crimes committed by paranoid psychotics, where delusional ideas and hallucinations are the cause of their behavior. For Lacan, the aggressive drive that resolves in crime arises in this way, like the condition that serves as the basis for psychosis, it can be said to be unconscious, which means that the intentional content that translates it into consciousness cannot manifest itself without an commitment to the social demands integrated by the subject, that is, without camouflage of the constituent motives of the crime.

The objective characteristics of the crime, the choice of the victim, the criminal effectiveness, its unleashing and execution vary continuously according to the significance of the fundamental position. The criminal drive which he conceives as the basis of paranoia, would simply be an unsatisfactory abstraction if it were not controlled by a series of correlative anomalies of socialized instincts. The murder of the other represents nothing more than the attempted murder of ourselves, precisely because the other would represent our own ideal. It will be the analyst’s job to find the foreclosed contents causing the psychotic delusions that lead to homicide.

Eric Fromm

A humanist psychoanalyst, he proposes that destructiveness differs from sadism in the sense that the former proposes and seeks the elimination of the object, but is similar in that it is a consequence of isolation and helplessness. For Erich Fromm, sadistic behaviors are deeply rooted in a fixation on the anal sadistic stage. The analysis carried out by him considers that destructiveness is a consequence of existential anguish.

Furthermore, for Fromm, the explanation of destructiveness cannot be found in terms of animal or instinctual inheritance (as proposed, for example, by Lorenz) but must be understood based on the factors that distinguish man from the rest of the animals.

Antisocial behavior, as viewed through the lens of psychoanalysis, is often the result of unresolved unconscious conflicts, early childhood experiences, and a lack of emotional development. By exploring these underlying factors in therapy, individuals can begin to understand the root causes of their behavior and work towards meaningful change. Psychoanalytic treatment offers a deep and nuanced approach to understanding and addressing antisocial tendencies, with the goal of helping individuals build healthier relationships and live more fulfilling lives.