Revision. Psychology Yochelson and Samenow Criminal thinking patterns
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Revision. Psychology Yochelson and Samenow Criminal thinking patterns
Aim This research is reported in a book rather than a journal article and is an account of the authors work with mentally ill offenders. The authors claim that it is possible to describe thinking patterns that are common to such offenders. Method Interviews Participants 255 male offenders resident in a psychiatric hospital in the USA. They had been judged either not guilty by reasons of insanity or incompetent to stand trial or had been referred to the authors by agencies such as the courts, probation services or social services. Procedure Each offender was interviewed a number of times as part of the treatment they received in hospital. These interviews were conducted by the authors and were Freudian in nature. These were not standardised interviews and this research could be regarded as a large collection of case studies. Results The authors suggest that criminals have quite distinct and erroneous thinking patterns that different them from non criminals. They conclude that they are essentially in control of their lives of their lives and their criminality is a result of choices made from an early age. Further, they suggest that offenders have cognitive processes which lead to a distorted self image and result not only in criminal choices but also in denial of responsibility. They describe the criminal personality as characterised by 40 thinking errors which fall into three broad categories: 1)Criminal thinking patterns which are characterised by fear and, simultaneously a need for power and control: other features in the category include a search for perfection, lying and inconsistencies or fragmentation of thinking and a lack time perspective 2)automatic thinking errors which include lack of empathy and trust, a failure to accept obligations, a secretive communication style and a perception of themselves as the victim. 3)Crime related thinking errors which include optimistic fantasying about specific criminal acts with no regard to deterrent factors; this also includes an unrealistic sense of invulnerability. The authors suggest therefore that criminals are not necessarily impulsive that they have planned and fantasised about their actions and that it is these thinking patterns which need to be confronted in treatment. Ychelson and Samenow claim high success rates in getting offenders to accept that they have a criminal personality and in changing their thinking patterns.
YouTube | December 28, 2008
