Citation

Shon PCH, Barton-Bellessa S. Aggress. Violent Behav. 2015; 25: 95-103.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.avb.2015.07.004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Alfred Adler is often introduced and discussed incorrectly as one of Freud's students and as a psychoanalytic theorist in criminology and psychology textbooks. While thinkers such as Freud and Jung theorize about crime in tangential ways, as almost an afterthought to their accounts of neurosis and personality, Alfred Adler was one of the few pioneers in the history of psychology who had an actual theory of crime. Yet, Adler's writings on crime, its causes and assumptions have been largely overlooked in contemporary research. While Adler espoused the view that crime represents a "useless" response to the social demands of life, we argue that Adler's theory of crime presupposes a rational choice model of criminal behavior, thus mirroring the Classical School perspective on crime. This paper provides a synthesis and a critique of Alfred Adler's theory of crime.

Language: en