Sexual Offenders

Personal Construct Theory and Deviant Sexual Behaviour

James Horley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135449278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia clinica

Is there an alternative way of treating sexual offenders beyond traditional psychiatry?

Sexual Offenders explores and develops personal construct theory in terms of forensic and social psychology, and examines the possibilities for sexual offender assessment and therapy.

Rather than viewing sexual offenders as having a mental illness or possessing a set of pathological personality traits, personal construct theory indicates that all people learn particular ways of understanding their own experience, and use these 'personal constructs' to anticipate the future. Through a variety of experiences, sexual offenders appear to develop a set of constructs that demands a particular understanding of themselves and other people. James Horley suggests that if they desire change sexual offenders can alter these constructs through psychotherapy. Sexual Offenders describes a number of techniques used by the author and other clinicians as well as presenting new and more dynamic approaches to psychological assessment.

Based on over 20 years of the author's clinical and research work, this book will provide professionals and students in the field of forensic psychology and psychiatry with an alternative way of treating sex offender clients.

Chapter 1
Sexual offending

An alternative construction

The girl led me on … she was teasing … [although] I could be highly sexed.

(E. S., incarcerated for the sexual assault of a young teenager, personal communication)

Sexual assault has become a major social issue in many contemporary cultures. It is rare to find any media broadcast that does not devote at least one story to the assault or abuse of someone, or to the concern about the potential consequences for assault victims. Considerable ink and airtime is devoted to stories about the backgrounds of various abusers and victims. The sexual abuse of individuals, especially those victims viewed as very vulnerable such as women and children, is rarely tolerated in any form in most societies. Perhaps part of the concern is due to some astonishing statistics concerning the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault in many countries. One national survey in the United States (Finkelhor et al., 1990), for example, found that 25 per cent of adult female respondents and 16 per cent of adult male respondents reported some unwanted sexual touching or abuse. Published in 2002, national data from Canada (reported by Kong et al., 2003) revealed a sexual assault rate of 86 per 100,000 residents. Whatever forms the basis of the concern about sexual assault and abuse, the concern is significant.

The discussions that swirl around sexual assault and abuse touch on many different issues, including morality, but legal issues involving sexual offenses that have psychological implications seem especially germane. There are a number of issues within criminal justice that are relevant to sexual offenses, and many of the issues and questions pertain to the offenders themselves. How are we to view these offenders, most often men, who perpetrate such unspeakable crimes? Often, especially since the mid-twentieth century, the answer has come back that, while they are generally not “psychotic” or “crazy”, they do suffer from some form of mental defect or personality problem. The exact nature of the problem or problems of sexual abusers, however, is not at all clear.

In this book, some of the issues concerning sexual offenders, especially the nature of sexual assault and change in those who perpetrate such offenses, will be discussed. It is necessary to state at the outset some limits on this discussion. First, since much of the existing literature on sexual offenders deals with men as abusers, and all of my research and clinical experience have focussed on male offenders, I have decided to restrict the material in this book to men. In this way, my general use of “he”, the gendered third-person personal pronoun, is justified. Female offenders may be very different from male offenders, but at this point we really do not know. More importantly, rather than a wide-ranging examination of a variety of different perspectives, a single theoretical framework will be presented. Personal construct theory (PCT), a psychological theory of human functioning that dates from the 1950s, appears to me to open up a number of possibilities in conceptualization, psychological assessment, and psychotherapeutic treatment of sexual offenders. This perspective has informed my research and clinical work with sexual offenders for more than two decades. The specific assessments and treatments that I have employed will be presented in some detail here. Although there will be very little discussion of more traditional approaches to work with sexual offenders, except to compare and contrast the personal construct approach, it is my hope that some of the specific techniques described here will be considered, if not employed by all forensic mental health professionals who work with sexual offenders. My real intent is that most if not all mainstream approaches to sexual offenders be re-examined in light of the alternative perspective, personal construct theory, presented in this book.

I would also note here that the quotations at the beginnings of the chapters are direct quotes provided by clients in writing that I have chosen to illustrate some point. These men, not identified in any specific way, do have important comments to make. I want to allow them an opportunity to share their own questions and comments about themselves in their own words. While they can be evasive, these men can also be insightful, not only into their own personal circumstances but into their fellows’ conditions as well. If nothing else, they can illustrate well some point or issue at hand. All too often we ignore the voices of our clients, perhaps because we are too busy or, perhaps more likely, we see them as offering little to our “objective” assessment and treatment efforts except intentional diversion and obfuscation of the “truth”. We should, however, take them seriously because they might well have something important to offer about the nature of deviant sexual interests or sexual abuse.

Before delving into the perplexing and troubling world of sexual offenses, an examination of human sexuality in more general terms is informative and provides a starting point. If nothing else, such a discussion can frame the more narrow concerns of deviant sexuality. In light of the extensive contemporary literature on human sexuality, only a brief overview of some relevant considerations on sexuality is possible to avoid complete distraction, and even another book.

Reflections on human sexuality

There is a significant difference between human and infrahuman sexual behaviour. On the whole, despite some well-publicized attempts to tie us to biological imperatives (e.g., Buss, 1994), theorists and therapists concerned with human sexuality are agreed on this basic statement. People are not bound to biophysical markers or instinctual demands as are most animals (Masters, et al., 1988). Human sexual behaviours are not simply an immediate response to a particular colour, a smell, or a sound. Sex among humans is not simply a case of instinctive or automatic responses to various stimuli. We take a vast array of contextual features into consideration before responding in a sexual manner. It is not just the naked body of a desirable individual, however attractive, that elicits a sexual response from the human observer. Should the naked individual be pursued by a knife-wielding attacker, or sitting on a concrete floor of a grimy institution among other naked individuals, a sexual response is unlikely. The setting or the situation is key to human sexual behaviour, indeed all human behaviour. We tend to think, and interpret, before we act sexually. Understanding what kind of behaviour is called for by a situation is key to our adaptation and survival and, while we may question the quality of our thinking both individually and collectively on many occasions, it is certainly a key human characteristic.

An important determinant of human sexual response is mood. This is not in reference to the setting (e.g., “mood lighting”, “mood music”), but mood here refers to the emotional-psychological state of the actor(s). It is important to be “in the mood” for sex, and this is not the case of monthly or annual sexual receptivity as is the case with many infrahumans. We are able to be sexual almost anytime, but we need to “feel” that it is the right time to engage in sexual behaviour. To be primed for sexual activity – to be “horny” or “randy” if you will – does not simply involve certain biophysical factors (e.g., healthy vascular system, presence of hormones in the bloodstream) although, no doubt, biophysical aspects of our bodies are important in such a state. More importantly, a sense of being ready for sex involves feelings of love, attraction to beauty, receptiveness to sensuality, excitement, and/or any number of other thoughts and emotions. Possibly a complex combination of feelings is necessary for any individual to become sexually aroused, or to be “in the mood”, and we can also be put off sex rather readily at times simply by a transitory happening that breaks the mood. The necessary precursors in terms of feelings are probably very idiosyncratic, even if we can speak of common feelings that accompany sexual arousal (Masters et al., 1988).

Interpretation is likely a key process in human sexual arousal and behaviour, and not just interpretation in terms of internal feelings or states, but interpretation of bodily states and sensations. Many if not all our bodily states require some understanding or “meaning” placed on the event (e.g., “Does that growling coming from my stomach mean I am hungry or did I pick up a nasty parasite in the tropics last month?”). If a man wakes in the morning with an erection and chooses to construe his stiff penis as evidence of sexual arousal rather than blood pooling in his lower abdomen as a function of a full bladder, there is every likelihood that the response will be sexual in nature rather than excretory. While there may be some frequent, common, or normative understandings of many bodily states, we still need to interpret bodily cues, often ambiguous ones but sometimes rather obvious ones, in order to act.

Just as the timing of human sexual expression is virtually limitless, almost anytime and anywhere, the range of sexual interests and behaviours engaged in by people is vast. Whether alone or with others, we engage in a wide range of activities that can be construed as sexual. Not all of these behaviours result in an orgiastic finale, although many might. Kinsey and colleagues (e.g., Kinsey et al., 1948, 1953), despite methodological difficulties, did demonstrate in a series of detailed surveys in the mid-twentieth century that the heartland of the United States was not nearly as homogeneous, sexually speaking, as many believed it to be. The practices and fantasies of many Americans were much richer than even many so-called experts anticipated. This appears to be the case not only in the United States but around the world, across culture and time, even if many are not as ready to admit in face-to-face questioning the details that many of Kinsey’s respondents offered. Sexual practice, indeed gender itself (see Weeks, 1995; Kinsman, 1996), is much more complex than many once believed. I would argue that explanations require a corresponding complexity. If we adopt a simple biological hedonism that seems at the basis of some views of human sexuality (e.g., Buss, 1994), how are we to explain variations? Theories have been developed, including a few longstanding and rather intriguing efforts (e.g., Freund, 1990), but most have proved to be too general, too vague, or too descriptive to be of much use. How can we account for the mind-numbing range and complexity of this sexual expression? This only appears possible if we consider the vast number of possibilities in terms of human sexual outcomes. In other words, people do not engage in sex for a single purpose. We do not engage in sex for reasons strictly of reproduction or physical pleasure; rather, as meaning-makers, we engage in sexual behaviour, and all behaviour, in response to a broad and varied set of possible meanings of the actions. The meanings of human sexual behaviour or the reasons for human sexual thoughts, feelings, and action are likely as varied and unique as there are individuals. For some individuals, sex may be only about reproduction and, for others, only pleasure, but sex can and probably does stand for much more for the majority of individuals. Sexual thoughts and behaviour can be for purposes of expressing love, expressing hate, expressing disgust, wanting to fall asleep, needing distraction from regularity, needing regularity, confirming attractiveness, advancing a relationship, achieving intimacy, and so on. A recent survey (Meston and Buss, 2007) found 237 distinct reasons for human sexual behaviour, including “Getting closer to God” and “Wanting to humiliate the person”. I rather doubt, too, that students at the University of Texas, mostly undergraduates, are all that experienced or sophisticated in sexual realms. It is possible, if not probable, that a single sexual act can have multiple meanings and purposes. We need to consider not only personal attitudinal and emotional factors, but larger cultural and subcultural contexts (Masters et al., 1988).

It also appears as if sexual expression and orientation are far more fluid than fixed throughout the course of life. Kinsman (1991, 1996) has argued that orientation, such as interest in same and opposite sex individuals, waxes and wanes over time for many individuals to the extent that they are reluctant to talk of dominant individual sexual orientations. They are certainly unwilling to ascribe significant genetic or biological roots to such notions as “homosexuality” or “heterosexuality”.

If human sexual behaviour is so complex and multifaceted, is it possible to make any general statements about sex? At the risk of oversimplification, I would argue that we can. For me, human sexuality, being about personal meaning, revolves around self-validation and personal identity. By this, I do not mean that sex is necessarily selfish. Instead, sex, whether autoerotic behaviour or acts involving one or more partners, ultimately concerns an affirmation of the individual actor. This may be the affirmation, for example, of selflessness, insofar as someone views a particular sexual encounter as a demonstration of his or her own selfless giving. It is true that we may benefit collectively from sex, if only from the sustenance of further offspring, but the sexual act is essentially an individual one based on the views and the interests/desires/concerns of individual actors.

The adoption of a self-validational position can help to explain the vast varieties of human sexual interests and expressions. How, for example, can pain be pleasurable? How can being whipped or bound in a sadomasochistic encounter be a sensual delight? Unless one subscribes to some position that people can be “wired incorrectly”, where painful stimuli like being slapped or whipped are actually perceived as pleasurable, the basic hedonistic assumptions of the position make anything “aberrant” very difficult to explain. If, however, we can adopt a more flexible agentic position whereby an individual is viewed as an active construer of his or her own world, pleasure and pain become very subjective and personal. Clearly, even a soft caress of the cheek is not in and of itself pleasant. It depends on the situation and the relationships between those involved. An unwanted touch, however gentle, can sting like a whip. If so, why cannot the reverse be true as well? The crack of the whip, or even the cut of the knife, might well be perceived by the recipient as the ultimate in sensual delights. Both context and construal are key factors. A cut on the cheek or leg from the razor is an event that draws blood and appears irritating and unpleasant regardless of the circumstances, probably with few exceptions. On the other hand, if the cut comes during a role-playing encounter staged by two individuals keen on mutual pleasure, either as part of a long-term sexual relationship or a brief affair lasting a few hours, the resulting sensation may well be much less irritating. In fact, especially in contrast to the cut during a morning shave, it may be very exciting and arousing. Thought about the nature of the situation and one’s role in the action is important, as is one’s overall view of oneself and any other players in the sexual encounter. Being tied up and punished by a stranger or an abuser may be extremely unpleasant, if not traumatic, whereas being punished by a lover or dominatrix may be arousing. This may, in part, be due to a view that the “pain” is justified because one is “bad”, if only temporarily.

A long-term view of oneself as unworthy or unacceptable in some fashion may well provide a backdrop for the perception of continual pain and humiliation as quite acceptable if not pleasurable. It may also be that, as part of a generally overall positive view of oneself, the pain is perceived as pleasure if there is an understanding of oneself as “sexual adventurer”. The pleasure, here, is the result of self-validation insofar as my view of myself as flawed, unworthy, domineering, liberated, or whatever is supported and extended by the “abuse” or sexual outcome. The resultant self-knowledge or affirmation of current self-understanding is inherently pleasant or satisfying. This position requires further elaboration and exploration, and I will soon situate it in a well-developed theory of personality.

Popular perspectives on deviant sexual behaviour

The basis of much contemporary thought on sexual offenders and sexual deviance dates from the nineteenth century. A number of psychiatric investigators, especially the German psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing (1886/1960), in an attempt to understand and categorize the variety of what must have appeared to Victorian eyes as a bewildering range of bizarre and troubling practices, developed theories and hypotheses about the nature of normal and abnormal sexual practices. A number of historians and sociologists (e.g., Foucault, 1976/1990; Lutzen, 1995; Weeks, 1995) have described the historical origins of this medico-scientific position, as well as the medicalization of sexuality. In the realm of perversity, Krafft-Ebing was one of the first to attempt a psychiatric nosology of abnormal sexual practices and behaviour. Krafft-Ebing (1886/1965), in his famous text on deviant sexual practices that went into many editions, Psychopathia sexualis, documented eventually hundreds of cases of non-normative human sexual practice on his way to developing a systematic categorization. He coined many of the terms still in use in psychiatry today (e.g., pedophilia, exhibitionism), and his efforts formed the basis of psychiatric thought on contemporary sexual deviation. According to Foucault (1976/1990), the mid- to late nineteenth century marked the beginning of what he termed “sexual science”. The intent, no doubt, of the work by Krafft-Ebing and others was to shift a class of behaviour that was both curious and disturbing from moral and religious domains to medical areas. Such a move would render them open to scientific solution or treatment. As expected, the treatment focus did indeed shift from religious interventions (e.g., confession) to somatic therapies and, eventually, psychotherapies. For Foucault, however, this represented the pathologizing of all non-normative sexual practices, especially homosexuality.

From the early to mid-twentieth century, with a few noteworthy exceptions (e.g., Ellis, 1933), academic interest in deviant sexual behaviour seemed to stagnate. Even Sigmund Freud, despite an early interest in the importance of child sexual abuse in the development of adult psychopathology and the psychosexual theory that is so well-known today, had remarkably little to say about sexual perversion. As Masson (1984) described in detail, Freud’s abandonment of his tentative seduction hypothesis of the late 1890s led him away from concern about actual sexual abuse to sexual fantasy. Freud (1905/1975) did note later, however, that “the sexual abuse of children is found with uncanny frequency among school teachers and child attendants” (p. 14). He concluded, rather weakly, that “the impulses of sexual life are among those which, even normally, are the least controlled by the higher activities of the mind” (p. 15). One subsequent psychoananalytic writer (Fraser, 1976) has provided an account of child sexual abuse from a Freudian perspective. In a very creative and well-crafted book, Fraser has described child molesters as the result of a dominant yet distant mother and an absent, weak or “despised” father. The unresolved Oedipal strivings of a young male in such a family produces a “narcissistic inversion” in which the individual, as he ages, “remains deeply in love with the child he was then” (p. 20). He concluded, perhaps correctly, that the major problem faced by men who molest children is their obsessive preoccupation with their sexually deviant behaviour. Fraser draws widely from English literature to support his case. His theory, unfortunately, is unconvincing. Not only does Fraser relate homosexuality to child sexual abuse – to be fair, a problem with psychoanalysis generally as well as other contemporary thought – but he fails to account adequately for adult males who molest young females since they are the wrong sex to be “the child he was then”. His argument is weakened, undoubtedly, by his failure to consult the clinical and/or research literatures seriously. An intensive examination of one child molester was conducted by Bell and Hall (1971) from a psychodynamic if not psychoanalytic perspective. Their case study of an abuser focussed on dream content and dream analysis. Their position was that latent dream symbols are used to represent significant but disturbing thoughts and feelings. Among their findings, these investigators reported that their molester, a single adult male who lived with his mother, had numerous dreams that involved his mother, supportive of the psychoanalytic view that dominant mothers, or at least the perception of a dominant mother, are a causative factor for many if not all abusers.

One popular psychological theory employed at times to explain sexual abuse is social learning theory (e.g., Abel et al., 1984). From a social learning perspective, a number of theorists (e.g., Abel et al., 1984; Laws and Marshall, 1990) have argued that children can be exposed to models and experience some early arousal to non-normal stimuli which, when combined with inappropriate masturbatory fantasies during the adolescent years, lead to sexually anomolous behaviour. At the same time, in line with more recent work in social learning theory (e.g., Bandura, 1982, 1986), cognitions in the form of “self-descriptions which may guide or limit … behavior” (Laws and Marshall, 1990, p. 220) are recognized as significant in the acquisition and maintenance of sexually deviant behaviours. There has, however, been relatively little explicit use of social learning theory over the past several years. This is surprising given the concern of cognitive social learning theory (Bandura, 1986) on the regulation of behaviour.

A portion of the empirical work on sexual offenders’ cognitions has been concerned with fantasy, especially deviant sexual fantasy, and to a somewhat lesser extent on deviant beliefs and attributions. A fairly direct line can be traced back to a New Jersey study of 300 sexual offenders by Ellis and Brancale (1956). This early work was not concerned with offenders’ cognition – quite surprising given Ellis’s (e.g., Ellis, 1962) developing interest in irrational beliefs – except in terms of offenders’ accounts of their own offenses. Among their results, they cited non-specific “clinical evidence” that exhibitionists and child molesters tend to have difficulty explaining their own motives. They failed, however, to make differential predictions for offender types, with most of their discussion assuming that sexual offenders represented a homogeneous group.

If this were a more traditional overview of sexual offending and sexual deviation, we would likely have to include a serious discussion of the paraphilias. The paraphilias, or literally “disorders of brotherly love”, provide the classificatory label for deviant or abnormal sexual behaviours developed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 1980, 2000). There are, however, a number of problems with this notion. The first and most obvious difficulty with the paraphilias concerns the term itself. Since we are concerned here with sexual behaviour, where is the relevance of “brotherly love”? Also, even if we adopted the more appropriate “paraeros”, the entire issue of misplaced love, as opposed to simply abusive sexual behaviour, would remain. Since I actually see paraeros as...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Sexual offending: an alternative construction
• 2 Sexual offender self-labelling and PCT
• 3 Social power and sexual assault
• 4 Alternative approaches to the psychological assessment of sex offenders
• 5 Psychotherapy with sexual offenders
• 6 Assessment and treatment of sexual offenders: an illustrative case
• 7 Final considerations
• References