Criminal Psychology
Stanton Samenow quoted, “How a person behaves is determined largely by how he thinks and criminals think differently. Criminal psychology can be best described as a branch of psychology which investigates to the psychology of crimes with particular references to the personality factors of the crime. However, Bartol & Bartol (2004) points out, recent years since the early 1990s have seen a movement away from the focus on personality factors and more of a move toward developmental factors. Developmental theory is a subfield of criminology (Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990) and a subfield of psychology (Manaster, 1977). The appeal of criminal psychology, as it is presently dominated by the developmental perspective has the same appeal as most psychodynamic psychology in that it seems to offer all the answers that criminals no matter how bad, can be rehabilitated or reformed, and that any delinquent no matter how bad can be saved from a lifetime of crime (Bartol &Bartol, 2004). The APA tolerates the term “antisocial behavior” for serious, habitual misbehavior prohibits, labeling of “antisocial personality disorder on anyone under the age 18 and allowing practitioners to use the alternative DSM-IV diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder (Bartol & Bartol, 2004).
Theories
There are credibility reasons to be concerned with theories, but there are other, more significant reasons why theory is important. A theory represents the pinnacle of scientific progress because it logically summarizes all that is known about the cause of a phenomenon at any given point in history. However, a theory goes further than just arranging facts because it consists of principles and statements which are capable of generalizing beyond the known facts (Kaplan, 1964). Concepts are testable while constructs are not. You test a theory by using one or more ways to measure the concept, and any specific disagreement if it occurs, is usually a matter of disagreement over how...