(Bisexual woman, aged 18; Meston and Buss, 2009, p. 207)
Sometimes being submissive turns me on. Not always…Being submissive sometimes includes having my wrists tied down with rope or having my partner hold my arms down.
(Heterosexual woman, aged 33; Meston and Buss, 2009, p. 208)
Exhibitionism
A classical account
Apart from masochism, Rousseau also described exhibitionism. The following events happened when he was about 16 years of age, the result, he suggests, of his chronic shyness, insecurity and inability to establish conventional relationships with the opposite sex. This would seem to be a textbook example of courtship disorder, possibly combined with youthful naïve optimism (p. 90):
My disturbance of mind became so strong that, being unable to satisfy my desires, I excited them by the most extravagant behaviour. I haunted dark alleys and lonely spots where I could expose myself to women from afar off in the condition in which I should have liked to be in their company…The absurd pleasure I got from displaying myself before their eyes is quite indescribable. There was only one step for me still to make to achieve the experience I desired, and I have no doubt that some bold girl would have afforded me the amusement, as she passed, if I had possessed the courage to wait.
Later insights
In the clinical experience of Money (1986), exhibitionism can develop very early (p. 20): ‘a young boy may over-respond to the excitement and the possible punishment generated by his display of his erect penis to girl playmates so that he becomes addicted to repeating the procedure’. This appears to represent another example of the familiar link between a stimulus situation and arousal generated in that situation.
The experience that appears to be the trigger to exhibitionism need not be sexually related at the time but it assumes this aspect later as a result of, it would seem, fantasy and conditioning. Two men who met this description were treated in Glasgow (McGuire et al., 1965). Each had been urinating at a location described as semi-public when they were disturbed by a woman passing. They had felt embarrassed and had quickly moved on but subsequently masturbated to the image in memory. From this, they were led to exposure in public. Note that, although the initial encounter was not erotically charged, nonetheless it was emotionally potent. This emotional charge could have had the effect of increasing the chances of subsequent aberrant behaviour appearing by means of (a) consolidating the memory of the incident and (b) emotion being transferred from fear/embarrassment to sexual arousal.
Kinsey et al., (1953) suggested that what motivates exhibitionism is the surprise or embarrassment of the accosted female combined with the high of a forbidden pursuit. Another dimension is also possible: a link with aggressive feelings. Based upon the strong male reaction to visual sexual stimuli, Britton (1998) suggests (p. 86):
Some flashers mistakenly assume that if a woman sees an erect naked penis it has a similar effect on her and she’ll become so filled with lust, she’ll have sex with them…There is also sometimes an aggressive or revenge element – something has happened in their own earlier life, they’ve been rejected or ridiculed by a woman and they want to shock and frighten and dominate.
Consider the case of a 32-year-old patient (J), a factory worker (Rosen and Fracher, 1983). As a child, J and the other children in the family were beaten by the father, said to be ‘an abusive drunken tyrant’ (p. 151). In adolescence, J would retire for long periods into the shower where he would obtain relief from tension and anxiety by masturbation. This was accompanied by a rich world of fantasy in which he was strongly attractive to the opposite sex. At age 17, J experienced a very bad encounter with his father, which left him feeling anger. So, J exposed himself to a group of girls, supposing that they would find the sight irresistible. J obtained some relief from this and repeated the behaviour frequently in the future. J was a loner during his twenties, finding solace and escape from negative emotions only in masturbation accompanied by deviant fantasy or exhibitionism. The latter gave him a feeling of improved self-esteem. J also developed the habit of voyeurism, using this to fuel his fantasy that the women he spied upon found him desirable.
A similar case concerned L.R., who was a chaplain in the US Air Force, aged 37. Stressed by marital and professional conflicts, L.R. found himself entertaining exhibitionist fantasies at an increasing frequency and intensity. To resist them was becoming more difficult and he cruised through the streets on the look-out for potential female targets. He derived some transient relief from anxiety by exhibitionism.
The exhibitionist can now achieve an outlet in cyberspace by sending anonymous images of himself to unsuspecting recipients, albeit a behaviour somewhat lacking in desired feedback.
Exhibitionism appears to be almost exclusively a male pursuit (Kinsey et al., 1953).
Paedophilia and child molestation
Basics
The paedophile has an attraction (‘sexual preference’) directed towards children, associated with fantasy (Barbaree, 1990), which triggers a relatively high level of sexual arousal. The use of fantasy is exemplified by an offender’s account (Gee et al., 2003, p. 52):
whenever you are depressed, you would use images of naked kids to pull you out of it.
…
inside you had nothing to think about, the boredom, that probably had something to do with it.
At other times a positive mood could be enhanced by fantasy, as in:
fantasy makes things even more exciting.
Paedophiles exhibit not only an attraction to children but often also a conflict over sex with adults, taking the form of either indifference or disgust (Williams and Finkelhor, 1990). There is a tendency for paedophiles to find children less threatening and more accepting than adults and it is easier to control them (Groth, 1983), suggesting a developmental trajectory directed by interactions with social fear. Some paedophiles are not able to bring themselves to start a conversation with an adult (Pithers et al., 1983). Bancroft (2009) speculates that most boys’ first sexual attraction is to girls of a similar age and then the attraction is adjusted with years. Paedophiles appear to be lacking this developmental adjustment. Usually paedophiles do not marry (Hickey, 2010).
There is a distinction between paedophiles and what are termed ‘non-paedophiliac child molesters’ (Mendez and Shapira, 2011). The latter might well be married and have conventional adult relationships but opportunistically have relationships with under-age children, or they might be adolescents who have difficulty with establishing relationships with peers.
Sometimes a person can inhibit paedophilic tendencies until influenced by stress, alcohol or drugs (Abel and Osborn, 1995), suggesting the lifting of top-down inhibition. Paedophiles commonly hold ‘neutralizing definitions’, for example ‘children need sex for healthy growth and desire sex with adults’. The world can be selectively interpreted in such terms (Ward and Beech, 2006), for example a gesture of friendship might be construed as a sexual advance. If the paedophile was also the victim of sexual abuse, this lends itself to the kind of cognition ‘He did it and got away with it, so I can do the same’ (Wolf, 1988). It suggests a desire to replicate a paedophilic encounter.
Internet sites provide a forum where deviant fantasies can be socially reinforced by approval from others and increase the chances that fantasy will turn into reality. Female paedophiles exist, which might surprise some people (Ramsland and McGrain, 2010) and certain Internet sites serve them (Lambert and O’Halloran, 2008). One message on a female site pointed to satiety and escalation (p. 290):
I left the child porn behind. I was bored with it and preferred the erotic stories, they took up less space on my floppy discs. But I eventually got bored with that as well. I wanted real experience with a child.
Psychopaths and sex with children
Some of those having sex with children meet the criteria of being termed psychopaths (Hare, 1993). They are lacking moral restraints and thereby unmoved by the harm that they do. One psychopath guilty of
abusing his girlfriend’s 8-year-old daughter reported (Hare, 1993, p. 110) ‘I just take what’s available.’
Brain processes
In some cases, men with a conventional sexual history develop a sexual attraction to children following brain damage, from disease or injury (Mendez and Shapira, 2011). This can be part of a general loss of discrimination shown by an increase in a range of different aspects of desire, such as demanding frequent sex from a partner and inappropriate advances to women in public. Damage to the prefrontal region is commonly implicated. Often such patients can articulate the inappropriateness of their actions but cannot inhibit them, a feature shared with others exhibiting a similar imbalance of controls, whether or not sexual desire is changed.
Therapy
There is at least one report of successful treatment with the dopamine-blocking drug haloperidol, pointing to a reduction in the strength of the incentive-based approach system. Some interventions for paedophiles try to exploit deviant fantasy to a therapeutic end (Salter, 1988). Offenders can be asked to masturbate to satiation and beyond while holding the fantasy in mind, in the hope that it will lose its potency (‘habituation’). Therapists can then propose acceptable substitute fantasies (adult and consenting content) as material for accompanying masturbation. Another technique is to try to block a fantasy sequence at an early stage by imposing in the sequence a memory of a real aversive event from the individual’s life, such as a drowning incident or an attack of asthma.
Attempts can be made to block paedophilic approach sequences at an early stage (Pithers et al., 1983). The technique taps into the sequence of incentive approach when the person is still relatively ‘cool’ and less likely to give in to temptation (Chapter 12). For example, a paedophile might carry a ‘stop card’ and have instructions to read it at the first feeling of attraction to a child. The card might say something indicating that just a friendly chat will lead to making a sexual advance (the attraction might first have been triggered at an unconscious and automatic level). It appears that this technique brings inhibition into the ‘here and now’ and away from the abstract and remote. By the same logic, the paedophile might need to plan routes ahead and make a conscious effort to avoid locations that are likely to trigger an ascending phase of desire, such as a school playground (Pithers et al., 1983). The individual might be advised to avoid alcohol prior to approaching any high-risk situations.
Multiple factors underlying motivation
That motivation can be very complex is exemplified by Perry, a 16-year-old boy (Rich, 2006). At age 14, Perry started to sexually abuse his stepsister Marcy, who was aged 4. He had tried unsuccessfully to stop, describing the behaviour as ‘addictive and obsessive’. He suggested that the behaviour was a means of getting back at his father and step-mother, as well as at Marcy, for his perceived failings. Rich argues (p. 154):
Perry’s sexually abusive relationship with his young step-sister possibly met a complex combination of personal needs. It may be seen as a troubled effort to become connected to someone, combined with being seen, commanding respect, and being in charge (if only in the form of fear and domination – much like his father), while also meeting Perry’s needs to feel that he was experiencing what he imagined other young men of his age were experiencing – sex!
Rich suggests also that sources of reward derived from such behaviour include satisfying curiosity and relief of stress. Taking such a multidimensional approach to understanding Perry’s motivation could help to rule out other explanations and suggest more hopeful therapeutic interventions. On Perry’s behaviour, he writes (p. 159):
rather than being the product of deviant sexual arousal – wanting to hurt another individual, wildly out-of-control sexual drive…is more directly related to attachment difficulties and his view of himself, others, relationships and their availability to him, and his capacity to have a satisfactory impact on the world.
Thus attachment issues rather than atypical sexual choice could form the most productive target of therapy.
Sadism
Sexual sadism would seem to reflect a development of the sadistic individual in which sexual desire and aggression have fused (Doidge, 2007). There are a number of ingredients of the motivation and behaviour of sadism and it is important to distinguish between what might be called ‘benign sadists’ and ‘toxic sadists’. Concerning the former category, a survey carried out in Great Britain led Gosselin and Wilson (1980) to comment (p. 50): ‘it is our impression, based on our interviews and the research of others, that most sexual sadists have no wish to hurt their partner in their sex games any more than is enjoyed or at least accepted by the partner’. An important aspect of the motivation of the more toxic type of sadists is gaining total mastery and control over the destiny of the victim (Gibb, 2011; Schlesinger, 2001). Use of bondage is one vehicle to achieve this. Another factor in the motivational mix is observing the consequences of the actions (‘feedback’) in the form of fear and pain of the victim.
Indicating the interactive nature of desire in such cases, Krafft-Ebing (1978, p. 54) wrote:
That lust and cruelty often occur together is a fact that has long been recognized and is frequently observed…When the association of lust and cruelty is present, not only does the lustful emotion awaken the impulse to cruelty, but vice versa; cruel ideas and acts of cruelty cause sexual excitement.
Krafft-Ebing reported very few cases of sadism in women. One such, which involved a fetishist component, was as follows (p. 85):
A married man presented himself with numerous scars of cuts on his arms. He told of their origin as follows: When he wished to approach his wife, who was younger and somewhat ‘nervous’, he first had to make a cut in his arm. Then she would suck the wound and during the act become violently excited sexually.
C. Wilson (1988, p. 113) attributes habituation and escalation to the Marquis de Sade:
when the fairy gold dissolved in his fingers, he decided that the problem was that his goal was not ‘forbidden’ enough, and looked around for something slightly more wicked.
Wilson continued (p. 246):
he had to conjure up more and more nauseating forms of violation.
A woman fortunate enough to survive the sadistic sexual assaults inflicted by the Gloucester couple, Fred and Rosemary West suggests that they derived pleasure from the signs of fear and pain on the faces of their victims (Sounes, 1995). Of course, fear did not exist in a vacuum. It was the result of violent acts, which were means of exerting control over the social environment.
Necrophilia
The usual interpretation of ‘necrophilia’ is in terms of desiring sexual ‘relations’ with dead bodies. However, it literally means a morbid attraction to death, in which case Harold Shipman might be described in such terms (Whittle and Ritchie, 2004).
Apparently, there exist brothels in Seattle (Rule, 2004) and Paris (Krafft-Ebing, 1978, p. 66; Masters, 1993) and doubtless elsewhere catering for this taste, where the sex worker puts on make-up and dresses as in death, while lying in a coffin and with solemn music playing for the benefit of her client. The wives of some married men are said to perform a similar role, though this has never formed a popular topic of conversation in my social circle.
One can speculate that this behaviour might sometimes, if not always, be associated with a fear of contact with real living and reciprocating humans (Schlesinger, 2007). This could include a fear of criticism over inadequacies of performance. Such fear might skew the trajectory of sexual development towards forming a desire for a passive incentive. Thus, Krafft-Ebing (p. 66) speculated:
it is probable that the lifeless condition itself forms the stimulus for the perverse individual. It is possible that the corpse – a human form absolutely without will – satisfies an abnormal desire, in that the object of desire is seen to be capable of absolute subjugation, without possibility of resistance.
Some cases of sexual homicide (described in Chapter 21) are associated with the killer having sex with the
victim only after death (Hickey, 2010). Hickey writes (p. 156): ‘In the perception of the offender, a corpse permits him to be intimate without fear of rejection.’
In summary
The various forms of desire described here illustrate how explanations can be offered in terms of some of the same processes as those that underlie conventional desires, such as the central role of arousal and the use of fantasy.
The formation of associations between arousal and a sexual stimulus is evident throughout as are the strengthening (‘reinforcing’) effects of consequences, for example orgasm through masturbation.
Denial of access to conventional targets of desire could also play an important role in the development of desires at the fringes.
Twenty The toxic fusion: violence and sexual desire
But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,
And he had won what he would lose again;
This forced league doth force a further strife;
This momentary joy breeds months of pain;
This hot desire converts to cold disdain.
(Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, lines 687–91)
Rapists come in different varieties with different underlying motivational dynamics (Hickey, 2010).1 Therefore, it is possible to present here a description in only very broad brushstrokes, highlighting certain features that might usually be present. Some rapes are planned well in advance and target a stranger, whereas others can be the sudden impulsive reaction to thwarting of the male’s goals towards a familiar woman, as in date rape. Some appear to be second best to consensual sex, where force is only instrumental to achieve the goal. For others, the element of coercion is an integral part of the desire. So, it appears that rape can serve goals in addition to sexual fulfilment (Marshall and Barbaree, 1990) and interactions of sexual desire with other motivations are evident. A desire for power and dominance can contribute to the motivation (Calhoun and Wilson, 2000). Some rapists use violence only to gain access to a woman, whereas for others the violence continues beyond this point suggesting fusion of sexual and aggressive motivations (Zillmann, 1984). Sadly, rape is evident across cultures, including even the sexually permissive land of Polynesian Mangaia (Marshall, 1971). Novelty, excitement and transgression doubtless often play a role. As the ex-wife of the British rapist known as the ‘monster of the M5’ expressed it (quoted by Apter, 2007, p. 152): ‘We always had a perfectly healthy sex life – but he always seemed to need that little bit of extra excitement, like a racing driver.’
How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge Page 46
