The inverse role of preparatory erotic stimulation in exhibitionists: Phallometric studies

Abstract

Although exhibitionists are arousable sexually by normal female erotic behavior (courtship, sexual passion), they avoid a considerable portion of courtship with the victim of their sexual offense. Human sexuality is not viewed as a unitary drive but as a system of partial sexual motivational states (SMS). The hypothesis was formulated that exhibitionists suffer from a difficulty in the transition from introductory (preexposure) SMS to more advanced (exposure) ones. Accordingly, offensive exposure (toward strange women) serves the purpose of separating the advanced sexual act from the evocation of the exhibitionist's own more introductory SMS by the object of exposure. Three phallometric studies, using film sequences as stimuli, confirmed predictions derived from the hypothesis: (1) Exhibitionists (N = 22) were found not to be arousable by female fear and anger behavior, but by female genital exposure, especially by a female pointing at her exposed genital. (2) This behavior aroused controls (N =41) only when erotic prestimulation immediately preceded. With no prestimulation, this behavior weakened the effect. (3) The arousal of exhibitionists (N =40) was superior to that of normals when this was shown after no prestimulation (“abnormal” arousal), but was inferior when it was shown immediately after “coy” erotic prestimulation. Thus, it is suspected that the problem lies in the transference from the “coy” phases to those when partners look at the other's genital. It may be useful to shape erotic partnership of exhibitionists along lines different from those traditionally prevalent in our cultures.