Perverse Psychology

The pathologization of sexual violence and transgenderism

Jem Tosh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317635437
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychology defines people who take pleasure in the suffering of others as having a form of mental illness, while media representations frame such behaviour as 'evil'. This is hotly contested territory, not least where sexual violence is concerned – violence which feminist voices argue is related to power rather than sex.

Perverse Psychology examines psychiatric constructions of sexual violence and transgender people from the 19th century until the latest DSM-5 diagnoses. It uses discourse analysis to interrogate the discursive boundaries between 'normal' and 'abnormal' rape, as well as the pathologization of gender and sexual diversity. The book illuminates for the first time the parallels between psychiatry's construction of gender diversity and sexual violence, and leads us to question whether it is violence that the profession finds so intriguing, or the gender nonconformity it represents.

Perverse Psychology is ideal reading for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of critical psychology, discourse analysis, feminism, transgender people, LGBT psychology, and the history of psychiatry.

Part I Sexual violence

DOI: 10.4324/9781315758190-2

2 Psychology and sexual violence

DOI: 10.4324/9781315758190-3

A historical review

Stopping violence against women has been a significant campaign aim for the feminist movement, and sexual violence is a key area of feminist research (e.g. Anderson and Doherty, 2008; Bevacqua, 2008; Brownmiller, 1971; Friedman and Valenti, 2008; Gavey, 2005; Kelly, 1987; Stanko, 1990). Feminism has given voice to the perspectives of women and highlighted the role of power and social inequality over theories of ‘uncontrollable’ sexual ‘urges’ (Hollway, 1984). They have highlighted the pervasive problem of sexual violence within a wide range of relationships, challenging the unrepresentative stereotype of rape by strangers, highlighting instead the violence committed by partners, family members, and acquaintances (Russell, 1975; 1982).¹

Psychiatry and psychology have also maintained a keen interest in sexual violence, albeit from a strikingly different viewpoint. Psychological perspectives have considered the role of the perpetrator, looking to internal and individual factors to explain rape: what are his² personality traits? What triggered his behaviour? How high is his sex drive? As we shall see, psychology and psychiatry have focused on attacks committed by strangers, despite their rarity (accounting for only 8 per cent of rapes according to the British Crime Survey, see Myhill and Allen, 2002).³ Therefore, there are many areas where feminism and psychiatry diverge; feminism foregrounds the experiences of victims and promotes justice and social change, psychiatry pathologizes perpetrators, providing a rationalization of their behaviour within psychological terms.

In this chapter I will describe how psychiatry, from its entrance into the medical arena as a specialism of perversion, constructs sexual violence as a symptom of mental ‘illness’. I trace this initial construction to the latest psychiatric text at the time of writing, the DSM-5 (APA, 2013). I begin by outlining the context prior to the introduction of perversions in the late nineteenth century, thus I describe how sexual violence was considered prior to psychiatry’s redefinition of the concept. This is to begin the process of loosening those deep-seated assumptions about what rape is. Psychiatry and psychology have been very influential and it can be difficult to begin to look at the issue from a different angle, to tease apart the psychological understanding of the term from the multitude of other competing meanings. I finish the chapter with a further look at these competing meanings, but from those who have been labelled. I ask, what meaning do they ascribe to their diagnosis and does this reaffirm or challenge psychological discourse?

Rapere

The word ‘rape’ is an emotive and contested term. It derives from the Latin rapere,⁴ meaning ‘to seize’ that was used in ancient Roman Law to refer to abductions of women for the purposes of marriage without prior agreement with the parents (Dunn, 2007). This perspective was adopted in early canon law: the laws relating to the Catholic Church. This emphasis on ‘abduction’ included both consensual and nonconsensual ‘abductions’ and thus referred to instances where women would leave their current marriage for another, as well as rape. The condemnation of such acts was due to the Church’s predominant concern of maintaining the institution of marriage and sexual morality. Thus, ‘wife-thefts’ were framed as an offence against marriage rather than the individual, and were dealt with within Church courts. These cases were most often seen in the local (or archidiaconal) courts also known as ‘bawdy courts’ due to the numerous cases dealing with issues regarding sex. This system of Church court existed alongside the state legal system during the Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth century) in England, and thus both dealt with cases of rapere (McNellis, 2008).

During the Anglo-Saxon period (fifth to eleventh century), rapere could be reprimanded by two years in prison and a fine, or death and dismemberment (depending on the status of the victim and perpetrator). Or, they could avoid punishment altogether if an agreement was made with the parents for a marriage to go ahead. The victim was also required to be a virgin, else the allegation was considered invalid (Adler, 1987). This is similar to ancient Hebrew law where there were different punishments depending on whether or not the woman was betrothed. If the woman was married, then the punishment was death by stoning (for the woman as well if she did not resist enough to attract the attention of rescuers) or if she was not married, then the man was to make a payment to the father and marry his victim (MacFarlane, 1993).

In England during the reign of William the Conqueror (1066–1087) the punishment of death was changed to castration and blindness (Blackstone, 1765–1769). As Bracton described

If he is convicted of this crime [this] punishment follows: the loss of members, that there be member for member, for when a virgin is defiled she loses her member and therefore let her defiler be punished in the parts in which he offended. Let him thus lose his eyes which gave him sight of the maiden’s beauty for which he coveted her. And let him lose as well the testicles which excited his hot lust.

(Bracton, n.d., pp. 414–415, cited in MacFarlane, 1993, p. 6)

Punishment changed again with the first English law regarding rapere; the Statute of Merton (1236). This law dealt with abductions of wards (heirs) like trespasses and thus aimed to protect or control material loss, with punishment being a payment of damages. The first Statute of Westminster (1275) extended the Statute of Merton to all women. Therefore rapere could also refer to theft, as the ‘stealing’ of virginity could result in a financial loss of a ‘bride price’ that would have been paid to the woman’s father (Brownmiller, 1971), or a loss of property if the woman were to marry her ‘abductor’ due to laws regarding the role of marriage and property ownership. The purpose of the ‘bride price’ was ‘to compensate the bride’s family or kinsfolk for the loss of her productive and reproductive value’ or to ‘acquire daughters-in-law’ (Reynolds, 2007, p. 31). The first Statute of Westminster (1275) was also the first law to consider both virgins and non-virgins as victims of rape, and the possibility of saving a ‘ravisher’ from conviction through marriage was no longer an option (Adler, 1987).

The second Statute of Westminster (1285) strengthened the first by returning to the punishment of death, due to concerns that the previous law was proving ineffective and encouraging abductions and rape to continue. However, these laws persisted to conflate sexual violence and abduction, as illustrated by the fact that fathers and husbands could make an allegation of rapere against other men, regardless of the women’s complicity or coercion (McNellis, 2008). Thus, these laws referred to a wide range of possible scenarios, that do not quite match up to our current definition of rape. The meaning of the term did change to include a more explicit focus on sexual violence; however this development was not straightforward (Dunn, 2013). While many abductions are likely to have involved nonconsensual sexual activity, the focus was more on property and morality rather than the subjective experience of the woman. These statutes also went on to influence the development of rape laws in other countries, including Canada (McFarlane, 1993) and the United States (Miller, 1994).

With the emphasis on marriage as a moral institution and the financial practicalities of ‘seizing’ a women (i.e. the attainment of property), sexual violence was framed as a sinful or criminal activity but not ‘abnormal’. But what of those cases that could not be explained so rationally? Incidents of rape that contained acts of extreme violence, such as mutilation or torture, were explained through religious or supernatural discourses, such as the Devil, werewolves, vampires (Gibson, 2012) or incubi: demonic creatures that were ‘sexual predators’ who ‘seduced’ or raped women (the male counterpart of the succubus) (Braidotti, 1999; Stephens, 2002). As Otten (1986) observed, ‘The trial records of cases of lycanthropy [the supernatural transformation into a werewolf] contain detailed accounts of rape, incest, murder, savage attacks, and cannibalism’ (p. 51). The similarity between the process of framing such violence as a result of demons (supernatural discourse) or a biological abnormality (psychiatric discourse) can be seen from accounts of such men being found ‘mentally incompetent’ due to demonic influence and sentenced to ‘spiritual care and moral instruction’ in monasteries rather than criminal punishment (Otten, 1986, p. 51). The current framing of such crimes as a result of ‘monsters’, then, wasn’t always a metaphor.

Rape as perversion

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that sexuality came under the gaze of psychiatry and became redefined in terms of normality and pathology. This process of psychiatrization included numerous European sexologists, such as Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Ellis, Moll, and others. These individuals contributed to yet another meaning or definition of rape: that of sexual pathology.

Foucault (1979) identified this era as central to the production of discourses related to sex, sexuality, and perversity. He stated that,

these were the years that saw the correlative appearance of a medicine, an ‘orthopedics,’ specific to sex: in a word, the opening up of the great medico-psychological domain of the ‘perversions,’ which was destined to take over from the old moral categories of debauchery and excess.

(Foucault, 1979, p. 118)

Key to this process of reconstruction was Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s sexology text entitled Psychopathia Sexualis (1892). Krafft-Ebing is described by some as a ‘founding father of scientific sexology’ (Oosterhuis, 2000, p. 47) and by others as providing the ‘first and most influential’ classification of perversions (Schaffner, 2011, p. 45). In Psychopathia Sexualis (Krafft-Ebing, 1892), rape featured as a possible symptom of several sexual perversions. These included ‘satyriasis’, which was defined as an ‘abnormal intense sexual impulse’ in males (p. 373).

Krafft-Ebing (1892) stated that ‘the man affected with this sexual passion seeks to satisfy his desire at any price, and therefore, becomes very dangerous to women’ (p. 373). However, sexual violence was more closely tied to the concept of sadism. Krafft-Ebing (1892) defined ‘sadism’ as an ‘association of active cruelty and violence with lust’ (p. 57), which had the potential to culminate in rape and ‘lust murder’ (p. 114). Under the category of sadism he described a wide range of detailed case studies of mutilation, murder, torture, and rape of both women and children, with a consistent mention of a lack of remorse as well as sporadic examples of cannibalism (an ‘appetite for the flesh of the murdered victim’ p. 63), vampirism (a sexual desire to drink blood) and necrophilia (sexual activity performed on a corpse). Havelock Ellis, an influential sexologist in the early twentieth century, also noted this occasional cross over between sadism and other examples of sexual perversions, referring to ‘necrosadism’ (sexual activity with a murder victim after the killing), and ‘zoosadism’ (a sexual desire to torture animals) in his Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Ellis, 1903, p. 126).

Krafft-Ebing (1892) initially coined the term ‘sadism’ after the author Marquis de Sade. Sade (2005) was known for erotic texts such as Justine, Juliette and Philosophy in the Bedroom, which were first published in late sixteenth century France. These works described a vast range of violent and sexual acts including rape and murder. However, they were produced at a violent time, where public executions of quartering and other torturous methods were used, and were popular. This led Bloch (1948), a psychiatrist who studied Sade’s life and works, to conclude that ‘the works of Marquis de Sade drip with the blood of his century’ (p. 67).

Sade’s activities in real life also influenced Krafft-Ebing’s definition of ‘sadism’. For example, Sade was imprisoned for binding and torturing a woman in 1768 (Coward, 2005). Therefore his name also represented a form of violent sexuality that went beyond his fictional works. Krafft-Ebing (1892) described Sade as a ‘monster’ who ‘[w]ould prick the object of his desire until the blood came. His greatest pleasure was to injure prostitutes and then bind their wounds’ (p. 71). However, Ellis (1903) argued that this image of Sade as ‘monstrous’ had been exaggerated beyond his actions. He also noted that the psychiatric concept of sadism that Krafft-Ebing had produced, did not quite match that described in Sade’s original works. Sade described,

In other novels you will find Virtue triumphant over Vice; Good rewarded, Evil punished. Here you will find Vice the victor, Virtue the vanquished; you will observe as a wretched and helpless young woman, though steeped in virtue, is made the plaything of the most barbarous villains, the victim of their most monstrous caprices; you will see the moral axioms of the ages besmirched with the most patent sophistries; you will, in short, witness life turned inside out, black having become white, up having become down, right having become wrong – and all this presented in the boldest, most blatant manner.

Why?

Because only by contrasting Good to Evil can we fully appreciate either. In a roomful of leopards, who notices a spot? And in a heaven full of saints, who notices a virtuous act?

Thus, on the following pages, we will present the girl Justine, subjected to every degradation imaginable. When here Honor remains intact, can you ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgients
• Introduction
• Part I Sexual violence
• Psychology and sexual violence: a historical review
• Riedicalizing rape
• Part II Transgenderism
• Psychology, homosexuality, and ‘fiinine boys’
• Transgenderism and psychology: transforming gender identity (into a) disorder
• Part III Perverse psychology
• Rape: a perversion of gender
• Conclusions: perverse psychology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index