NPR this morning featured a report about a change in the laws on shoplifting in the UK. From now on, there will be no risk of jail time for shoplifters. Their crime will be handled in the same manner as traffic violations unless there is a particularly high value item involved. Naturally, shop owners are distressed by this devaluation of their property but that apparently counts for little.
I am not terribly interested in determining the optimal punishment for shoplifting, but I was struck by the explanation for the change. The reporter explained that the change came about as a result of a typical (mis)application of the "root cause" concept. Since the "root cause" of most shoplifting is drug addiction (sic), and jail time does not address the "root cause", then jail time for the offense is not warranted. I suppose in such thinking, jail time would be a "disproportionate response."
While the particular offense involved is shoplifting, the logic, if this kind of thinking can be dignified with such a word, is familiar. The rubric of "root causes" as an explanation for manifest behavior, especially criminal behavior, remains one of the most egregious misuses of Psychoanalytic concepts that our psychobabble addled age has been heir to. It represents a classic inversion of the meaning of Freud's work and completely distorts and perverts the entire enterprise of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. It also leads to a "reductio ad absurdum" that renders the use of the concept literally nonsensical.
Freud's theory of the mind was revolutionary because he proposed the existence of a dynamic unconscious and formulated the concept of compromise formation and multiple determinants.
In brief, the idea that there are areas of the mind that are unavailable to our conscious awareness and that such unconscious parts of the mind have a major impact on our behavior and feelings was very troublesome at the time but has since become part of our zeitgeist. Unfortunately, the idea of "root causes" has become divorced from the ideas of multiple determinants and compromise formation, as well as the use of the concept to enhance personal responsibility.
Since the 60s, the idea has been twisted to mean that people's manifest behavior was never fully explanatory; there are always further reasons for behavior that the person may be unaware of and that society needs to take into account. This account can include seeking "root causes" as exculpatory explanations which relieve the person of full responsibility for their actions.
When "root causes" were wedded to the Marxist dialectic of oppressors and oppressed, any action taken by the less advantaged could be, and often has been, fully excused by those who are prone to this disorder of their thinking.
This use of the unconscious, "root causes", in this way is a perversion of Freud's ideas. He presented the goal of treatment to be increasing the understanding of the patient of their own unconscious motivations and processes so they could take more responsibility for their behavior, not as a way to avoid feeling responsible for what they do. Further, he recognized that there are always multiple determinants for any behavior and any particular manifest behavior can never be reduced to a single "root cause".
Whether we are talking about shoplifters or terrorists, the idea that their responsibility is lessened because their behavior has "root causes" serves primarily to weaken the ability of civilized people to ensure minimal standards of appropriate behavior.
Recent Comments