science · 23 January 1876 · 148 years ago
birth
Born 23 Jan 1876; died 2 Mar 1960 at age 84.
Italian sociologist, criminologist and statistician who extended his original career as a criminologist into a study of the criminal from biological and psychology viewpoints. Then to understand the normal man in his social environment, he applied statistics to analysis of social phenomena. He proposed that every person has a “deep ego’' of driven by subconscious primitive instincts for antisocial, egotistical or infantile behaviour. This co-exists with a “superior ego” responsible for social-adjusted attitudes of values, rules and norms. A person’s conduct is the result which of these is dominant. He published this theory in 1902, in La transformation del delito and continued to publish further elaborations upon it for years later.
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