The Criminal recidivism in the light of the psychoanalytic theory of repetition compulsion

Abstract

Faced with the chaos that dismay the Brazilian prison system, this article sought to elucidate, from the perspective of psychoanalysis, the psychic process that conditions the former prisoner to repeat the same criminal act or a more serious act than the one previously committed. The research is conducted under the aegis of the Brazilian Penal Code and focused on the device that causes recidivism not deliberate applicability. Therefore, from these investigations it could be argued criticism supported by the significant statistical data of repeat prisoners. The theory of compulsion to repetition, brought by Sigmund functioning of the psychic apparatus through symmetrical means of the physiological science of the reflex arc, and of the criminal Freud in 1915, explains from this convergence it is possible to conceive a series of acts that the subjects commit, whether lawful or illicit. In this sense, the present study seeks to understand whether criminal recidivism can be considered a psychic symptomatology derived from the compulsion to repeat that consequently intensifies obsessive neurosis. Finally, given the etiology, raise the fact that criminal recidivism, one of the driving causes of intramural chaos in Brazil, is capable of reconsideration in its objective incidence.