The Moral Personality of the Perpetrator and the Process of Choosing Alternatives

• In Event: EDLC: theoretical perspectives

Abstract

This paper explains the importance of the perpetrator's moral personality (Personalitas moralis, or the Ideal Self) in the process of evaluating and discovering alternatives. In a psychoanalytic sense, the Personalitas moralis describes that side of the human being that prevents the destructive drive and the action intention to commit the criminal act. In the psychic apparatus, the Ideal Self censors aggressive impulses and helps the individual to achieve a high sense of humanity. The perpetrator causes a crime being motivated in its commission by an action intention. The mental state that precedes the execution of the intentional action prepares the decision of the volitional act. The decision-making process influences and determines the transposition of the criminal ideation (from the symbolic world) into criminal behavior (the reality of the criminal action). The decision-making process is influenced by the existential values ​​of the perpetrator, the way of perceiving the action reality, the limbic system (emotions at the time of committing the act), the social experience in assessing the situation, or sometimes by a certain dysfunction of the cerebral cortex. A meta-analysis of criminological research supports the fact that self-control is a function of revealing moral personality. Personalitas moralis, as an accessible moral feeling, must be reconstructed in detention centers. The paper also analyzes the theory of situational action (the perception-choice process), highlighting the fact that at the moment of intention the act of perception is not only a simple observation of the presence of the victim, but also the possibility of choosing alternatives.

Author

• Gabriel Tanasescu, University of Craiova Faculty of Law