The research area of forensic child and youth care sciences is focused on the manifestations, causes, prevention and treatment of serious behavioural problems in children and young people. Examples of this are delinquent behaviour, behavioural problems at school, aggression, antisocial behaviour and substance use. As professor by special appointment, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst Frans Schalkwijk will conduct research into the development and diagnostics of conscience. He will thereby fulfil a great need in the forensic field for a scientifically based theory of conscience, a set of instruments for diagnosing conscience and interventions aimed at the development of conscience. The innovative aspect of his approach is that he sees conscience as an interplay of empathetic ability, the ability to feel self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt or pride, and knowing what moral behaviour entails.

Schalkwijk will contribute to education at the university by participating in both the ‘Moral Development’ lecture series and the ‘Forensic Diagnostics’ lecture series, and by supervising the writing of theses. He also teaches postgraduate psychoanalytical training and organizes meetings for the promotion of expertise in the forensic field.

About Frans Schalkwijk

Schalkwijk works as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in his own practice. He is also a forensic rapporteur pro Justitia for juvenile suspects. In his research into the diagnosis of the development of conscience he collaborates with colleagues from De Bascule Academic Centre for Child and Youth Psychiatry and the Netherlands Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, among others. Schalkwijk is the content organiser of the lecture cycle ‘Psychoanalysis and Science’ at the Amsterdam Academic Club of the UvA and of the ‘Psychodynamics’ curriculum at Lemion, an organisation for continuing education for healthcare professionals.

Schalkwijk is the author of numerous articles and books. He wrote the textbook Emoties bij jongeren: Theorie en diagnostiek van het geweten (Boom, 2011) and the popular-science book Onvolmaakt tevreden: Omgaan met je innerlijke criticus (Boom, 2016). In 2018’s Narcisme (AUP), Schalkwijk described narcissism from a psychoanalytic perspective.