1. THE NEGATIVE AS AN OBSTACLE TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEMPORARY VIOLENCE: CRIME AND COLLECTIVENESS.
- Author
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Rauter, Cristina
- Subjects
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DELINQUENT behavior , *VIOLENCE , *CRIME , *SOCIAL problems , *BIOLOGICAL psychiatry - Abstract
Psychologist, Psychiatrists and other specialists often give explanations to crime based on the existence of internal tendencies toward anti-social behavior, either located "inside" certain individuals, genetically or constitutionally determined, or in poor areas of cities, associating poverty and crime. Some of them are inheritors of Freud's theory of the death instinct; others are based on current biological psychiatry which proposes diagnostic categories such as anti-social disorder, in which genetic causes can be attributed to antisocial behavior. What we aim to discuss is that these conceptions, based on primary negative tendencies, do not explain crime, but are obstacles to build any valuable understanding or practical intervention upon the phenomenon. The knowledge of specialists must overcome this limit imposed by ideas that are only capable of seeing negative tendencies inside the individuals or in collective life which can only lead to false solutions. Exclusive penal end police solutions to crime have proved to be highly ineffective and also unethical. If we believe in the existence of a primary tendency to crime and destructiveness, there can be no other solution than opposing a barrier to this threatening tendency, either in the field of psychotherapy or treatment or in the field of public security policies. A contemporary approach to the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza can lead us to a different direction, by thinking crime as a secondary effect of multiple causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2014
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