%0 Journal Article
%T What Punishment Expresses
%A Craig Reeves
%J Social & Legal Studies
%@ 1461-7390
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0964663918764794
%X In this article, I consider the question of what punishment expresses and propose a way of approaching the question that overcomes problems in both psychosocial and philosophical expressivist traditions. The problem in both traditions is, I suggest, the need for an adequate moral ¨C neither moralizing nor reductive ¨C psychology, and I argue that Melanie Klein¡¯s work offers such a moral psychology. I offer a reconstruction of Klein¡¯s central claims and begin to sketch some of its potential implications for an expressive account of punishment. I outline a Kleinian interpretation of modern punishment¡¯s expression as of an essentially persecutory nature but also include depressive realizations that have generally proved too difficult for liberal modernity to work through successfully, and the recent ¡®persecutory turn¡¯ is a defence against such realizations. I conclude by considering the wider philosophical significance of a Kleinian account for the expressivist theory of punishment
%K Expression
%K Melanie Klein
%K philosophy of punishment
%K psychoanalysis
%K psychosocial penal theory
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0964663918764794