Freudian subversion of the etiological paradigm in criminology through the formulation of the “criminal from a sense of guilt”

Abstract

This article revisits Freud’s 1916 text “Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work”, in which Freud discusses the “criminal from a sense of guilt,” analyzing it in light of later developments in criminology, particularly the theoretical framework of the social reaction paradigm. The aim is to demonstrate how the founder of psychoanalysis subverted the etiological method of criminology in his time. By stating that criminalization itself could serve as a “cause” of criminality—at least in certain neurotic individuals—Freud approaches criminology through a skeptical view of the presumption that punishment serves as a deterrent to crime. This perspective opens the door to a critique of punishment and institutional forms of penal control. In this text, as well as in other instances where Freud reflects on the legal-penal system, he reaffirms psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge that resists submission and instrumentalization as a legitimizing tool for criminal law, despite numerous theoretical attempts to the contrary within psychoanalysis itself.