Cesare Lombroso

LOMBROSO Cesare (1836-1909), a famous Italian psychiatrist and criminologist, professor of psychiatry, forensic medicine, and criminal anthropology (a science created by him) in Pavia and Turin. Lombroso owes his fame primarily to the doctrine he developed regarding the born criminal (the book "Uomo delinquente," Milano, 1876). According to this doctrine, the inclination to commit crimes is a consequence of the degenerative psycho-physical organization of the criminal, which manifests somatically in an irregular structure of the skull, etc., and represents, from the point of view of anthropology, a phenomenon of "atavism," and from the point of view of clinical psychiatry, a hidden form of epilepsy. Another of his works, "Genius and Insanity" ("Genio e follia," Milano, 1864), also caused a great sensation; in it, by drawing an analogy between both these phenomena, he tries to prove that genius is a manifestation of hidden epilepsy, which, as an equivalent to convulsive seizures, can also produce bouts of creative inspiration. L. also owns a number of works on clinical psychiatry; his merit is also the establishment (1872) of the role of spoiled maize in the etiology of pellagra. L.'s criminological views were at one time very popular, especially in Italy, where there are still many followers of L. among prominent criminologists. This doctrine grew on the soil of the struggle against the so-called classical school in criminal law. As a reaction against the doctrine of free will and the categorical imperative that dominated the classical school, L. put forward the position of the biologically predetermined criminal fate of a certain individual. The doctrine of L. reflects the crisis of the legal consciousness of developing capitalism with its search for internal causes of criminality lying within the individual. Hence follows L.'s formula: "crime is a kind of discharge of a special structure of human organisms." At the present time, there is a certain revival of L.'s ideas in criminal psychology and psychopathology. J. Lange in his work "Crime as Destiny" states directly: "We must conclude that people are born with active criminal predispositions." He is echoed by K. Birnbaum, A. Lenz, Pende, Rossi, Roden, and others. Among Soviet researchers, E. Krasnushkin, and especially Brailovsky, are close to Lombrosianism, although they add an appeal to the "environment." Because of this, crime loses its socio-class conditioning and is determined entirely by the biological essence of the perpetrator. The reactionary nature of such an understanding of both the criminal and criminality lies in the ignoring of the laws of class struggle in modern society. Only Marxism helps to free oneself from the reactionism and scientific groundlessness of L.'s doctrine. The doctrine of Lombroso was subjected to criticism by Ch. Rakovsky, K. Kautsky, Bonger, P. Lafargue, and others. All of L.'s major works have been published in Russian as well.