Italian psychiatrist Lombroso Cesare: biography, books, activities and achievements

Lombroso Cesare is a famous criminalist, psychiatrist and sociologist. He is the ancestor of the Italian school of criminal anthropology. This article will describe his biography.

Youth and study

Lombroso Cesare was born in Verona in 1836. The boy's family was quite wealthy, as it owned a lot of land. In his youth, Cesare studied Chinese and Semitic languages. But he did not manage to make a quiet career. Conclusion in the fortress on charges of conspiracy, material deprivation, participation in the war aroused in the young man interest in psychiatry. The first articles on this topic Cesare published in 19 years, being trained at the Medical Faculty (University of Pavia). In them, the future psychiatrist told about the problem of cretinism. The young man himself mastered such difficult subjects as social hygiene and ethnolinguistics. In 1862 he was awarded the title of professor of medicine, and later - criminal anthropology and legal psychiatry. Lombroso also headed the clinic of mental illnesses. The decisive role in his intellectual formation was played by the philosophy of positivism. Its main postulate is the statement of the priority of scientific knowledge, which was obtained experimentally.

Anthropological direction

Cesare Lombroso is the founder of the anthropological direction in criminal law and criminology. The main features of this trend are that in criminology it is necessary to introduce the method of natural science - observation and experience. And the identity of the perpetrator should become the center of study.

The first anthropometric studies

They were conducted by scientists in the sixties of the nineteenth century. Cesare worked as a doctor then, and also participated in the company to eradicate banditry in southern Italy. The material collected by the professor became a huge contribution to the development of criminal anthropology and social hygiene. The scientist analyzed the empirical data and concluded that the poor social and economic conditions of life in southern Italy contributed to the birth of people in this area of a mentally and anatomically anomalous type. In other words, they are ordinary criminal persons. This anomaly Cesare revealed through psychiatric and anthropometric examination. On the basis of this, a prognostic assessment of the dynamics of the development of crime was made. With his conceptual approach, the scientist challenged the position of official criminology, which blamed only the person who violated the law.

Craniograph

Lombrozo was the first of the researchers to apply the anthropometric method using the craniograph. With this device, Cesare measured the size of the parts of the head and face of the suspects. The results were published by him in the work "Anthropometry of 400 infringers", which was published in 1872.

The theory of the "born criminal"

The scientist formulated it in 1876. It was then that his work, The Criminal Person, was published. Cesare believes that the offenders do not become, but are born. That is, according to Lambroso, a crime is the same natural phenomenon as death or birth. The professor came to this conclusion, comparing the results of studies of pathological psychology, physiology and anatomy of criminals with their anthropometric data. In his opinion, the offender is a degenerate, behind in his development from the evolution of a normal person. Such an individual can not control his own behavior, and the best way is to get rid of him, depriving him of life or freedom.

There is also a classification of offenders, formulated by Cesare Lombroso. Types of criminals, in his opinion, are: swindlers, rapists, thieves and murderers. Each of them has innate features of an atavistic nature, which testify to the existence of a criminal predisposition and a lag in development. The professor singled out stigmata (physical characteristics) and mental traits, the presence of which will help to identify the person endowed with birth with criminal inclinations. The main signs of the offender Cesare considered a look from under his brows, large jaws, a low forehead, a wrinkled nose, etc. Their presence makes it possible to identify a criminal even before he committed the very atrocity. In this connection, the scientist demanded that sociologists, anthropologists and doctors be brought to the judge, and the question of guilt should be replaced with the question of social harm.

By the way, at the moment anthropometric measurements are carried out in almost all countries of the world. And this is typical not only for the special services and the army. For example, knowledge of anthropometry is necessary in the design of civilian objects and objects, as well as in the study of labor markets (labor).

Disadvantages of the theory

The scientific views of Cesare Lombroso were quite radical and did not take into account the social factors of crime. Therefore, the theory of the scientist was sharply criticized. Cesare even had to soften his own position. In his later works, he listed as a congenital anthropological type only 40% of offenders. Also, the scientist recognized the importance of non-hereditary - sociological and psychopathological - causes of crime. Based on this, his theory can be called biosociological.

"Genius and insanity"

Perhaps, this is the most famous work of Cesare Lombroso. "Genius and insanity" was written by him in 1895. In this book, the professor put forward one main thesis. It sounds like this: "Genius is an abnormal activity of the brain bordering on epileptoid psychosis." Cesare wrote that in physiological terms, the similarity of geniuses to madmen simply amazes. They have the same reaction to atmospheric phenomena, and heredity and race have the same effect on their birth. Many geniuses had insanity. These included: Schopenhauer, Rousseau, Newton, Swift, Cardano, Tasso, Schumann, Comte, Amper and a number of artists and artists. In an appendix to his book, Lombroso described the anomalies of the skull of geniuses and cited examples of the literary works of crazy authors.

Sociology of political crime

His most valuable part of the heritage in the form of research Cesare left it for this discipline. The essay "Anarchists" and "Political Revolution and Crime" are two works written by him on this topic. These works are still popular in the homeland of the scientist. The phenomenon of political crime was spread in Italy in the 19-20th century in the form of anarchist terrorism. The professor investigated it in the perspective of considering the identity of the perpetrator, who was sacrificed to the utopian ideal of social justice. The scientist attributed the nature of this behavior to depreciation of the higher goals of social justice, corruption of politicians and the crisis of democracy in the Italian parliament.

Another famous work by Cesare Lombroso - "The Love of the Madmen". It reveals the manifestation of this feeling in mentally ill people.

Introduction of control of physiological reactions

Cesare Lombroso, whose books are known throughout the world, was one of the first to apply in forensics achievements in physiology. In 1880, the scientist began to measure the suspects' pulse and pressure during the interrogation procedure. Thus, he could easily determine whether a potential criminal is lying or not. And the device for measuring pressure and pulse was called ...

Plethysmograph

In 1895 Lombroso Cesare published the results obtained after the application of laboratory instruments during interrogation. In one of these studies, the professor used a plethysmograph. The experiment went like this: the suspect in the murder was asked to do a number of mathematical calculations in his mind. At the same time, the device connected to it fixed the pulse. Then a potential criminal was shown several photos of wounded children (among them there was a picture of the murdered girl). In the first case, his pulse jumped, and in the second was close to normal. From this, Cesare concluded that the suspect was innocent. And the results of the investigation confirmed his rightness. Probably, this was the first case in the literature of using the lie detector, which led to an acquittal. And he said that monitoring a person's physiological reactions can not only reveal the information he is hiding, but also establish innocence.

The scientist died in Turin in 1909.

Lombroso in Russia

Criminological ideas of the professor were widely known in our country. They are represented by the series of lifetime and posthumous editions of Cesare Lombroso: "Woman-criminal and prostitute", "Anti-Semitism", "Anarchists", etc. In 1897, the scientist came to the congress of Russian doctors who gave the Italian an enthusiastic reception. In the memoirs, Cesare reflected that period of his biography. He condemned the social structure of Russia for police arbitrariness ("suppression of character, conscience, thoughts of personality") and authoritarianism.

Lombrozianism

This term was widely distributed in the Soviet period and denoted the anthropological direction of the school of criminal law. Particularly criticized the doctrine of Cesare about the born criminal. Soviet jurists believed that such an approach contradicts the principle of legality, and also has a reactionary and anti-popular orientation, since it condemns the revolutionary actions of the exploited people. Such a prejudiced ideological approach dismissed many of the professor's services in researching the root causes of protest and extremist types of social struggle.

Conclusion

Despite the fallacy and just criticism of certain postulates of his own theory, Lombroso Cesare is one of the most outstanding scientists of the nineteenth century. He was a pioneer of introducing objective methods into the legal science. And his works gave a significant impetus to the development of legal psychology and criminology.