The Psychogenesis of the Criminal in a World of Total Prohibition
Disclaimer: This essay is a philosophical and theoretical reflection on the concept of prohibition and the transformation of the subject. All terms — including “ideal crime” — are used in an analytical and metaphorical sense. The text contains no calls to action, nor does it justify, promote, or romanticize the violation of law, morality, or social norms. Its sole purpose is to explore the boundaries of the permissible within the realm of intellectual discourse.
I. The Installation of “Must Not” and the Formation of Property Morality
Something is always forbidden to us. Always. Categorically. Unconditionally. Absolutely. From the earliest childhood, the child hears this word from parents and educators — a word that strips existence itself of joy. And we know it is not merely the voice of the parents — it is the voice of society, a prohibition against the appropriation of what belongs to others. Society fears the constant tension born of mistrust and declares theft the enemy of development.
“The prohibition ‘do not take what is not yours’ is not a moral axiom but a survival mechanism,” — says Thomas Hobbes.
“Property is an artificial but necessary convention. It restrains chaos, makes society predictable, and enables trade, negotiation, and trust,” — adds David Hume.
The task imposed on parents and educators is the automation of self-control: the process of upbringing must move from fear of punishment to internal restraint, to the understanding of the impermissibility of appropriation — the taming of the passion to possess. Through internalization, the norm ceases to be an external rule and becomes part of the conscience. Freud calls this mechanism the superego — the inner sentinel, formed as a projection of parental authority. It “punishes” the violator with guilt — a tension between the self and morality. Lacan clarifies: through the Name-of-the-Father (Nom du Père), the subject receives not only the prohibition but also the very possibility of desire. Where prohibition is absent, it is not freedom that emerges — but a psychotic void, fraught with consequences.
Yet prohibition can be internalized in different ways. If imposed harshly or irrationally, desire is not structured — only blocked. From this, impulsive criminality or Freudian neurotic self-punishment may arise. When the process of internalizing prohibition fails, the subject loses their boundaries: they either act without conscience or become afraid to desire at all.
The formation of property morality depends fundamentally on upbringing. Harsh or chaotic methods, as noted by the American Psychiatric Association, increase the risk of deviance. In contrast, as Grazyna Kochanska has shown, emotional warmth and reasonable discipline foster in the child a committed and irreversible cooperation: they obey not out of fear, but out of attachment. This is especially important for children with a “fearless” temperament — for them, conscience emerges not from fear, but from respect for a significant adult.
Thus, even the most rebellious personalities submit to a single principle: the inviolability of property. It is here that the philosophy of prohibition finds its canonical foundations. The prohibition becomes not merely a social taboo. It transforms into an internalized structure of the subject. (Lacan, Kant, and Althusser all affirm that prohibition can become a constitutive part of the subject’s inner architecture.) It is the result of the delicate interweaving of family, culture, morality, and the unconscious. When this interweaving succeeds — a morally autonomous agent is born. When it fails — a criminal is born, or a victim of their own guilt.
II. The Impossibility of Desire and the Emergence of a Singular Type of Subject
The prohibition is inviolable. It is not questioned, not debated, not condemned. It becomes sacred. It transforms into a social norm and a way of life — part of culture, of fairy tales, of films and books. It extends beyond situations where a child learns to share with others or to refrain from taking what is not theirs. It reaches into zones of total impossibility of possession.
A child sees toys their parents simply cannot afford. Objects that are inaccessible not because of behavior, but in principle — even polite asking changes nothing. “Must not” for the first time becomes untouchable. It continuously expands its reach: the prohibition now applies not only to someone else’s property, but to communication, to encounters, to dubious connections, to bodily experiments, to conflict.
As the child grows into adolescence, the prohibition takes on not just form — “you must not” — but also moral justification: preparation for an adult world filled with countless “must nots.” The adolescent’s environment attempts to rationalize ever more complex restrictions. Science supports this approach — the adolescent must learn to hear “no,” to accept it with dignity, to redirect attention to what is available. Respect for others’ property evolves into another vital principle of social interaction: the ability to accept someone else’s “no.”
And this works. Almost always.
But what if we are dealing with a singular type of subject? A hypersensitive and unpredictable being, one who is not willing to hear “no”? For whom “must not” is not a stopping force, but merely a temporary obstacle? A possessor — a hyper-egoistic being — who suddenly realizes that their entire life has been an endless litany of “must not”?
At first, like many of their peers, they begin to fear desire itself. Even in those moments where desire is necessary to shape their future. The Freudian inner sentinel, and Lacan’s Law of the Father, begin to operate within them excessively — not shaping a structure of desire, but deeply suppressing it. The prohibition against appropriation becomes total suppression — the elimination of the right to want.
They encounter the onset of ontological powerlessness. They become a barred subject in Lacan’s sense — one lacking any anchoring in their own desire. This condition can be described as fear of one’s own wanting, akin to the castration complex: the subject is paralyzed at the very threshold of transgression, fearing to cross the line. Desire becomes blocked not by morality, but by the very structure of reality: I must not — therefore I am not meant to — therefore I have no access — therefore I am no one.
III. Property as a Transcendent Taboo
As the “must not” embeds itself in the psyche of this hypersensitive subject, it becomes not just a prohibition, but a transcendent category. Property is no longer perceived merely through the lens of “do not touch,” but through a deep disbelief in the very possibility of possession. Ownership vanishes from the realm of what is possible — it slips beyond the boundaries of their world.
The wealthy have their houses, their women, their islands. They possess capital — and that has nothing to do with you. Not because you cannot reach it, but because you no longer even dare to imagine yourself there. Capital (as Erich Fromm suggests) appears as an unattainable object, whose possession is forever elusive — just as the prohibition of “must not” prevents the subject from experiencing the fullness of being. Things become sacred. Dreams — pleasant, yet impossible. Money becomes metaphysical. For this hypersensitive and unpredictable nature, “must not” is no longer about morality. “Must not” becomes a new god — invisible, demanding no temples or worship, but like a matrix, it permeates your life in silence. The subject in question gives up possession. And even their own dreams. They surrender. They find a job, revise their plans, try to build legitimate paths toward self-realization. They stop desiring this world — and become an observer. They accumulate experience in accepting social reality, absorbing with it countless examples of inexplicable possession: young women in luxury cars, wealthy heirs, lucky startups, meteoric career ascents, multi-million-dollar assets in the hands of nearly invisible, “gray” figures. They watch. And they continue to believe in their place within life. But a moment comes when they begin to ask: Why is it permitted for them — but not for me? Why do others possess — and I do not? They look inward, tracing dozens of cases of anomalous access to material resources, and they realize: the prohibition is not universal. John Locke wrote that “property is the extension of labor, and labor — part of the person.” But this subject does not deny labor — they know full well that in this world, labor guarantees nothing. Possession has become a function of access, not effort.
And so, they take — not as a thief, but as one who no longer asks permission to be a person in someone else’s image. Some have a license to be exceptional. Some have access. They — like most people around them — were given only an internal sentinel. Stirner affirmed the individual’s right to place themselves above society’s moral norms. Nietzsche declared the ideal of one who creates values “beyond good and evil.” In our time, Giorgio Agamben explored the zone of exception — a space beyond law, where normative moral regulators no longer function. The subject’s passage into such an extra-moral state is a step toward sovereignty — toward self-determination outside the framework of society. This is the moment when metamorphosis becomes possible: They die as the bearer of the implanted “must not,” And are reborn as a being capable of possessing without permission. This is the InfraHuman — a subject who is not immoral, but extra-moral.
The InfraHuman is one who, above all, has renounced being “human” in the humanistic sense: They no longer feel shame, no longer accept external morality, and act according to their own code. This is not a psychopathology — it is a philosophical transformation, a personality shifted to a lower moral frequency. They do not deny morality for others — and may even follow its norms in everyday life — but they rewrite it to carve out a space where their decisive act will strike. Their personality will be explored in future essays.
Extra-morality is not immorality in the sense of committing evil (as merely the opposite of good), but a departure from the entire good–evil dichotomy. This, as Max Stirner saw it, is the position of a person who rejects external moral abstractions and acts from their unique self. Georges Bataille likewise described crime not as an act for the sake of evil, but as a transgression undertaken to break through prohibition.
The subject we describe does not recognize the “must–must not” system as the foundation of reality. They decide for themselves what is permitted.
IV. Possession Without Permission: The Final Transition
In a world where prohibition is absolute, there are no exits. No exceptions. No loopholes. Even to imagine one is immoral; to speak of it is illegal. This is the moment of ontological totality — when prohibition becomes the deep architecture of being.
And so, only two paths remain: to surrender, like most do — or to redefine one’s nature. This subject is not someone who covets what belongs to others. They are someone who refuses to accept being the one to whom it is always denied. They are forced to become something else — out of despair. For otherwise, they will vanish. From this arises their new ontology: They are reborn as a being who knows they can do anything. They no longer fear.
The moment they realize that all prohibitions were lies, a decisive shift occurs. Objects are no longer sacred — they are possible. More than that: they are meant for those who dare. Kantian ethics teaches that to be free means to respect the autonomy of others — and thus their property. But this subject does not reject Kant — they bracket him. They construct their own ethic: not of a universal law, but of a singular law. They act as if their deed could become law — but only for themselves. They do not destroy another’s autonomy — they simply refuse to let it dictate who they are or what they may have.
What happens when one learns to overcome the fear of possessing the forbidden? Having mastered countless small “must nots,” they begin to crave the greater one. They start to look — at other people’s bodies, money, lives. Are these truly more inaccessible than a university admission or a car? Why can fear be conquered in one case — but not the other?
The answer is simple: everything is possible, if one finds the key to possession. The world never offers an answer to the question: How can one possess what must not be taken?
From the child’s simple fear, an ontological incapacity is born — the grown child no longer needs the state; prohibition is now built into their being. You want a Bentley not because you want the car — but because you can no longer afford to want. You tell yourself: “There are things I cannot take, not because they are out of reach, but because I forgot that I am allowed to desire.”
You commit the unthinkable the moment you stop fearing desire — and declare: “I possess the must not.” Here, metaphysics begins. For every “must not” is nothing but a projection of weakness onto the fabric of the world. The recognition that you may creates a radical shift in perception.
In V for Vendetta, Evey escapes her cell when she realizes the guards are fake — the path is free.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the patients could leave at any time — they simply didn’t know it.
It is no longer “must not.” It becomes: may — and even must. And when property loses its sacred aura, a fracture occurs — not simply I will take, but I will take all that I desire. But this act can only be committed by the other self — the one who no longer recognizes the coordinates of permission. The one who knows that what is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to the ox.
This mirrors the path of Tom Riddle, who sought to possess the ultimate prohibition — death itself — by splitting his soul into Horcruxes. His crimes were conceived as ideal, for with every murder, he concealed a fragment of himself, aiming to become impervious to retribution. He did not steal out of need, but to affirm exceptionality. His thefts were a defiance of the prohibition on power and immortality — marking him as one possible prototype of the InfraHuman.
Had permission been given occasionally — or granted to some and not others — he might not have changed as a person But the law is strict and singular: taking what is another’s is forbidden — always, under all circumstances. (So decree the Ten Commandments, and the laws of every land.) He has no escape. He not only learns to take what is “allowed” — (applying to his dream university, for example, and being accepted) — he sheds all moral barriers and takes everything he desires, even the forbidden. Because, as the saying goes: if something is forbidden but you desperately want it — then it is permitted. Society itself pushes him toward this transformation of personality: from I can’t and I don’t know how to: I will take what I want, from whom I want, when I want. This is the logic of the ideal crime: not merely to desire the impossible — but to know how to make it real. An ideal crime is a crime committed against the prohibition itself — one to which prohibition can no longer apply.