On the defensive

A psychoanalytically informed psychosocial reading of The Jack-Roller

Bibliographic Data

ID5795545
AuthorsD Gadd (0000-0002-0362-7648, Keele University), Tony Jefferson (0000-0002-2050-2521, John Jay University, New York, USA)
Year2007
Volume11
Issue4
Pages443-467
Publication date2007-10-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheoretical Criminology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-4806 • E-ISSN: 1461-7439
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1362480607081834
OpenAlexW2106302452
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited2

The copyright for this article is assigned to David Gadd and Tony Jefferson. (c)2007 D. Gadd and T. Jefferson. Who was `Stanley'? What can this single case contribute to criminological theory? These questions remain inadequately answered despite two books and numerous articles devoted to The Jack-Roller. This article shows that scholars have been too willing to accept Stanley's account as `told', over-eager to read him as a `social type' and too slow to interrogate critically the relationship between Stanley's psychological defensiveness and his socio-cultural background. Reconsidering Stanley's account of himself from a psychoanalytically informed psychosocial perspective, this article sheds new light on Stanley's family relationships, jack-rolling and somewhat precarious desistance from crime. The central argument of this article is that it is only through exploring what Stanley said through the prism of his unconscious defences against anxiety that both the particularities and typicality of his life can be properly grasped and the case's wider theoretical significance fully realized

Argument (complex analysis · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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