“A Strange Liking”: Our Admiration for Criminals

• Authors: Martha-Grace Duncan, Emory University
• Journal Title: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW
• Volume: Volume 1
• Publisher: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Law | 1991-01-01
• Type of Work: Article | Final Publisher PDF
• Subjects: Law
• Keywords: Psychoanalysis; Law and Literature; Criminals; Admiration; Envy; Bonny and Clyde; the Grapes of Wrath; the Playboy of the Western World; Great Expectations; Reaction Formation; Projection; Repression; Ball of Fat; Vicarious Punishment

Abstract

The law regards the felon as ignominious. It assumes the convict will be held in dishonor. Indeed, the stigma that flows from a criminal conviction is a factor courts consider in determining whether mens rea shall be required for that crime. Yet criminals are not always the objects of opprobrium. Noncriminals often enjoy, love, even admire criminals. They admire them not in spite of their criminality but because of it — or at least because of qualities that are inextricably linked to their criminality. That they sometimes do so wonderingly, against considerable inner resistance, serves only to highlight the strength of the attraction. This article explores noncriminals’ admiration for the lawbreaker. Drawing on literature, films, history, and psychoanalysis, the article seeks to delineate and explain this paradox. The article concludes that criminals and noncriminals are profoundly bound together. It argues that criminals, by their very existence, perform psychological functions for the law-abiding — gratifying their anti-social impulses, reassuring them of their comparative innocence, and assuaging their guilt through vicarious punishment. From this perspective, criminals are far from being an unequivocal evil; they are in fact necessary for us to be what we are. They are the Sancho Panza to our Don Quijote, the Fool to our King Lear, the partner we need to perform our complicated dance.