Erotic Preference Research Articles

Проституция и оказание сексуальных услуг: актуальные вопросы регулирования в мире и в России

Introduction. In the modern world, the public understanding of sexual mania, sexual freedom, and erotic preferences is undergoing significant changes caused by the influence of telecommunications systems, the modernization of moral values, and a change in moral guidelines. The tolerance of prostitution and sexual deviations has a negative impact on the normal physical, mental, spiritual, and moral development of citizens, distorts the consciousness of society, and especially affects minors, which can have an extremely negative impact on their further social adaptation in society. These phenomena are one of the most pressing and acute problems of Russian society, since the deformation of the physical and mental development of civil society threatens the health of the nation. A particular danger is the moral corruption of children and adolescents, the formation of premature unhealthy sexual interest in them, the development of a misconception about sexual relationships, and unnatural norms of sexual life. In the paper, the authors examined the specifics of the regulation of prostitution in certain foreign countries and in Russia and proposed some measures to improve the legislation. The purpose of the research is to study the legal regulation of prostitution in foreign countries and in Russia, as well as to improve the current Russian legislation. Methods. The methodological framework for the study was the comparative legal method. The methods of induction and deduction used contributed to obtaining most of the formulated conclusions. Results. Based on the research conducted, some measures are proposed to tighten the current Russian legislation aimed at preventing prostitution. The authors’ definitions of the concepts of “prostitution” and “sexual services” are formulated. Conclusions. It is proposed to distinguish the concepts of “prostitution” and “sexual services,” taking as a basis the fundamental concept of service.

Криминологические риски сексуальных девиаций в сети Интернет

Introduction. In the modern world, the public’s understanding of sexual hobbies, sexual freedom, and erotic preferences is undergoing significant changes caused by the influence of telecommunications systems, the modernization of moral values, and a change in moral guidelines. Tolerance to sexual deviations has a negative impact on the normal physical, mental, spiritual, and moral development of citizens and deforms the consciousness of minors, which can have an extremely negative impact on their further social adaptation in society. The purpose of the research is to study the complex criminological characteristics of the sexual services provided, the systematization and typologization of the modern sex industry as a social phenomenon and its criminological consequences, the obtaining of new knowledge about this phenomenon, and the development of general social proposals for the prevention of sexual deviations among young people that meet modern political, ideological, legal, and socio-economic conditions of modernity. Research methods: a special formal-logical method is used to collect, process, generalize, analyze, and interpret empirical material; the general scientific methods such as comparison and description; the general logical methods: analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, etc. As a result of the study, a broad description of the types of sexual services provided quid pro quo is presented, the threats of widespread and uncontrolled consumption of sexual services are identified, the authors’ classification of activities aimed at satisfying sexual needs is proposed, as well as the measures to prevent sexual deviant services provided quid pro quo.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

<i>The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century</i>

ANALYSING THE LEGAL STATUS OF LGBT IN INDIA AND TAKING THE NARRATIVE FORWARD: LIVING FREE AND EQUAL

This research paper will help you understand about the human sexuality and talks about the various types of gender identities currently evolving in the Indian society. The emergence of legal status and rights of the LGBTQIA community has been mainly derived from the precedence and doctrines followed in the highest courts of the United States and its consequences can be seen in alleviating the conditions of the community all over the world. The experience of having an exclusive or nearly exclusive erotic preference for people of the same sex in fantasies and, typically, through the realisation of sexual intimacy with people of the same sex, is referred to as "homosexuality." It can be thought of in terms of identity, behaviour, and desire. The emotional reaction to same-sex attraction is homosexual desire. When people who are the same sex interact sexually, it is considered homosexual behaviour. The assumption of a self-label known as "homosexual identity" signifies the recognition of the predominance of homosexual desire and behaviour in one's self-composition. Contrary to homosexual identity, homosexual orientation is an affective state that is largely characterised by samesex erotic desire that is uncontrollable and unaffected by historical or social construction. Homosexuals mainly fear to share their identities due to homophobia and discrimination that they will face. This deals with the various laws and legislations and court rulings which have favoured the betterment of the community in INDIA.

Forbidden Colors

Forbidden Colors

Lady with erotic preference for diapers

A patient in her 20s was referred to us for psychological assessment due to her depression and suicide attempts. She mentioned being anorgasmic except when diapered and emphasized her erotic preference for diapers. Her childhood included maternal deprivation in an impecunious family headed by an irritable physically disabled father on social assistance. Given the maternal deprivation in childhood, her erotic fixation on diapers parallels the emotional attachment to diapers observed by Harlow in mother deprived infant monkeys. Etiological hypotheses should also include the paradigm of avoidance learning from theories of behavior therapy. Our patient does not wish to change her sexual preference: in such cases, fetishism is not considered as an illness by DSM5. However, she needs to be treated for pathological levels of depression with suicidal ideation and low self-esteem.

Hebephilia: A Postmortem Dissection.

In 2008, the concept of hebephilia, which denotes an erotic preference for "pubescent children," was suggested by Blanchard and his team for inclusion in the DSM-5 (Blanchard et al., 2009). Four years later, the APA's Board of Trustees opted for the status quo and rejected that proposal. This essay sheds light on the reason for this rejection. I consider three important questions related to hebephilia: Does hebephilia exist? Is it a disease? And what would have been the social consequences of including it in the DSM? I argue that if Blanchard failed to convince others that hebephilia should be included in the DSM-5, it is not because he focused too much on the first question and was unable to offer a convincing answer to the second one, but because he made the mistake of dismissing the third one as extraneous. The DSM is not intended to be a pure research manual, and a category like hebephilia cannot be evaluated without taking into account its potential forensic impact. In part or in whole, the decision to include a new diagnostic category in the DSM is, and always should be, a political decision.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Mancophilia: Similarities and Differences

Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) is characterized by the intense desire for some form of body impairment. Most often sufferers report wanting a healthy limb to be amputated. Currently most professionals classify this strange wish as an identity disturbance, but several BIID affected persons also speak of a sexual component when describing their desire for an amputation. In contrast to BIID, “mancophilia” (also referred to as deformation fetishism, acrotomophilia, or amelotatism) is a form of paraphilia. Those with this condition are sexually aroused by people with a physical impairment as such as an amputation. In this pilot-study we investigated the differences between BIID and mancophilia with a self-report questionnaire, which asked 36 participants (18 with BIID, 18 with mancophilia) about their sexual preferences. The results showed a considerable overlap between the sexual preferences of people with BIID and those of people with mancophilia. BIID-participants self-reported an erotic preference for people with disabilities and, overall, a cluster-analysis resulted in three observable groups: Cluster-I, BIID with a strong sexual component (61.1%); Cluster-II, BIID with a moderate sexual component (16.7%); and Cluster-III, BIID with low or no sexual component (22.2%). However, the erotic fascination for one’s own amputation was only found in BIID afflicted persons and did not occur in people with mancophilia. Only the wish for an own handicap allows a strict differentiation between those two syndromes. In summary, these preliminary findings suggest that an erotic component seems to be a frequent part of the identity disorder BIID.

Preferred Female Body Proportions Among Child-Free Men

Based on conceptual extrapolations from sociobiological models concerning the significance of secondary sex characteristics as markers of a female's capacity to produce and nurture offspring, we reasoned that men's greater unwillingness to reproduce would be linked to preference for a female body type characterized by the relative absence of such markers. Heterosexual undergraduate men (N = 67) indicated their ideal (most arousing) female body type on-line by means of an adjustable female figure. As expected, the desire to remain childfree was linked to erotic preference for a combination of smaller breasts and larger waist-to-hip ratio. Additional research into individual factors that map onto variations in the preferred body proportions of erotic targets is thus encouraged.

Transforming Sexuality: The Medical Sources of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-95) and the Origins of the Theory of Bisexuality

This article explores the medical references in the writings of the German jurist and activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs as a means of breaking new ground in diverse fields (including history of medicine, history of sexuality, and gender history). It demonstrates that the theory of bisexuality has a much deeper and more textured genealogy than has been hitherto appreciated and that dual-gendered bodies and minds must be better recognized as important through the nineteenth century. Specifically, it demonstrates that classifications and rhetoric of hermaphroditism, and other dual-gendered categories (e.g., sexual dualism and anatomical bisexuality), were deployed in diverse contexts through the period, often with little or no reference to the occurrence of genital ambiguities. Important discourses in embryology, utilized by Ulrichs, suggested that all individuals, in the earliest stages of fetal development, were hermaphroditic. In making an analogy among the ontogeny of sex anatomy, hermaphroditism, and the development of erotic preferences, Ulrichs sought to naturalize homoeroticism, rendering social and legal prohibitions untenable. His advocacy, however, was counterbalanced by the Prussian forensic expert Johann Ludwig Casper who had made some conceptual maneuvers similar to Ulrichs only couched in the rhetoric of pathology. Ulrichs was equivocal in his use of forensic works such as Casper's, condemning their authors but recognizing similarities with his own gender schema.

The Fertility of Hebephiles and the Adaptationist Argument Against Including Hebephilia in DSM-5

In a paper that generated a certain amount of controversy, Blanchard et al. (2009) proposed that the paraphilias section ofDSM-5bemodifiedto includehebephilia, that is, theeroticpreference for pubescent children. Pubescent children were characterized by Blanchard et al. (2009) as children around the ages of 11 through 14years, but they could be described more precisely as children in Tanner stages 2 and 3 of pubertal development. Franklin (2009) criticized the proposal to include hebephilia in the DSM on the grounds that‘‘such attractions are evolutionarily adaptive’’(p. 319). Franklin did not explain this argument any further. Presumably, Franklin meant something along the following lines: In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, men with an erotic preference for pubescent females had greater reproductive success, either because they acquired female mates near the onset of their fecundity and thus prevented them from beingimpregnatedbyothermen,orbecausetheyhadmoreyearsin which to impregnate their mates themselves, or both. Since hebephilia is of evolutionary design, it cannot be a mental disorder. Franklin’s hypothesis was probably intended to explain hebephilia only in heterosexual men, since same-sex copulation and pairbonding with pubescent males in preference to physically mature males would not affect the reproductive success of homosexual men, either now or in the ancestral era. The contemporary environment obviously differs in important and partly unknowable ways from the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. It does, however, offer modern men considerable latitude regarding the ages of the females they choose to court and to form relationships with. If a North American hebephile cannot marry a pubescent girl, he can still marry one as close to puberty as legally possible. There is, therefore, nothing in the contemporary environment that would completely abolish the relation between hebephilia and fertility postulated by Franklin for the ancestral environment. I therefore conducted the following small study to investigate whether Franklin’s hypothesis agrees with the available empirical data. It was convenient to use, for this investigation, three groups of heterosexual men included in a recent study with a completely different purpose (Blanchard et al., 2010). These men were male patients who were phallometrically classified as heterosexual teleiophiles, heterosexual hebephiles, or heterosexual pedophiles.Allhad been systematicallyaskedabout thenumber of biological children they had fathered, either in or out of wedlock. For the present investigation, I restricted the sample to white subjects to reduce potential variance in fertility caused by cultural influences. This reduced the groups to 818 teleiophiles, 622 hebephiles, and 129 pedophiles. The mean age of the teleiophiles was 37.25 years (SD = 12.57), that of the hebephiles was 39.14 years (SD = 14.02), and that of the pedophiles was 36.86 years (SD = 14.36). Differences in mean age among the three groups were statistically significant, F(2, 1566) = 4.03, p = .02. The raw means showed that the teleiophiles reported 1.39 biological children (SD = 1.67), the hebephiles reported 1.30 biological children (SD = 1.55), and the pedophiles reported 0.74 biological children (SD = 1.29). The differences among mean numbers of children were tested in a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with the patient’s age at assessment as the single covariate. Levene’s test of equality of error variances did not indicate any violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption in the ANCOVA, F(2, 1566) = 2.52, ns. Number of biological children was significantly related to age at assessment, F(1, 1565) = 463.63, p 10, and to group, F(2, 1565) = 12.11, p\.0001. Pairwise comparisons R. Blanchard (&) Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College St., Toronto, ON M5T 1R8, Canada e-mail: ray_blanchard@camh.net

The Relation Between Peak Response Magnitudes and Agreement in Diagnoses Obtained From Two Different Phallometric Tests for Pedophilia

Phallometric testing is widely considered the best psychophysiological procedure for assessing erotic preferences in men. Researchers have differed, however, on the necessity of setting some minimum criterion of penile response for ascertaining the interpretability of a phallometric test result. Proponents of a minimum criterion have generally based their view on the intuitive notion that "more is better" rather than any formal demonstration of this. The present study was conducted to investigate whether there is any empirical evidence for this intuitive notion, by examining the relation between magnitude of penile response and the agreement in diagnoses obtained in two test sessions using different laboratory stimuli. The results showed that examinees with inconsistent diagnoses responded less on both tests and that examinees with inconsistent diagnoses responded less on the second test after controlling for their response on the first test. Results also indicated that at response levels less than 1 cm(3), diagnostic consistency was no better than chance, supporting the establishment of a minimum response level criterion.

DISTORÇÕES COGNITIVAS NAS PARAFILIAS

A história da compreensão das parafilias sempre esteve misturada com entendimento moral, mesmo na ciência, ou usando-a para não facilitar modificações de comportamento das pessoas que desejem efetuar estas mudanças. A partir da abordagem comportamentalcognitiva, podemos depreender mecanismos de pensamento distorsivo que, ao serem reconhecidos, podem abrir as portas para as mudanças e permitir o desenvolvimento de outras preferências eróticas que sejam mais adaptadas para a realidade do até então parafílico. Descrevemos as formas de distorções cognitivas que ouvimos dos pacientes que pretendem mudar os comportamentos sexuais exclusivistas que vivem.

Adult Sexual Attraction to Early-Stage Adolescents: Phallometry Doesn’t Equal Pathology

The finding of Blanchard et al. (2008) that adult self-reports of sexual preference for early-stage adolescents generally matched their phallometric responses to such adolescents does not justify the broad and startling conclusion of these researchers that ‘‘hebephilia exists as a discriminable erotic age-preference’’ so as to justify an expansion of the DSM diagnostic category of Pedophilia to include early-stage adolescents. DSM-IV-TR draws the distinction between pathological and non-pathological age-related sexual arousal at the onset of pubescence: adult arousal to prepubescents is considered pathological and adult arousal to pubescents and post-pubescents is considered non-pathological. This distinction is more than academic. It has serious, real world implications, given that, in the U.S., a diagnosis of Pedophilia can result in the diagnosed individual being subject to potential lifetime confinement pursuant to so-called ‘‘sexually violent predator’’ civil commitment laws (Zander, 2005). There are at least three major reasons why the Blanchard et al. proposal to extend the diagnostic criteria for Pedophilia to include adult sexual attraction to early-stage adolescents is a leap that is insufficiently supported by their data. First, as conceded in their article, ‘‘The main methodological limitation of the present study was the absence of models age 15–18 (midto late-adolescence) among the phallometric stimuli.’’ This means that we do not know if men who were aroused to early-stage adolescents—whom Blanchard et al. would now classify as paraphilic—might not also be equally or more aroused to midto late-stage adolescents, with respect to which they acknowledge, ‘‘Few would want to label erotic interest in late-or even mid-adolescents as psychopathology.’’ Yet, their proposal may do just that by pathologizing men attracted to early-stage adolescents as part of an overall arousal pattern to adolescents in all stages of sexual development. In other words, conspicuous by their absence are any data to refute the alternative hypothesis that sexual attraction to adolescents at all stages of sexual development is a discriminable, but not pathological, erotic preference. Second, the proposal to extend the already problematic diagnosis of Pedophilia to include early-stage adolescents would complicate the diagnosis further by exacerbating the problem of the diagnostic discriminability that Blanchard et al. aptly and punningly identify by pointing out that ‘‘[T]he onset of puberty varies from child to child and.. the boundaries of puberty are fuzzy to begin with.’’ Clinicians already wrestle with the line of demarcation between pre-pubescence and pubescence in the current diagnostic criteria, given: (1) the many definitions of pubertal onset (e.g., for girls is it menarche [mean age, 12.1 years, for African-American girls] or thelarche/pubarche [mean age, 9 years, for AfricanAmerican girls]); (2) the wide variability of individual pubertal onset age; and (3) the overall decreasing age of pubertal onset (Herman-Giddens, 2006). Imagine how much more impractical it would be to require forensic evaluators to determine the existence of Pedophilia based on the stage of adolescence of the examinee’s victim. Such determinations could literally devolve into a splitting of pubic hairs— resulting in an interrater reliability for the expanded diagnosis of Pedophilia that is even worse than is the case with the current version (Wollert, 2007). Their proposal to have diagnosticians specify the examinee’s preferred age to which he is aroused does little to solve the problem of discriminating early-stage adolescents from midto late-adolescents given the aforementioned diagnostic ambiguities resulting from variable and decreasing age of puberty. T. K. Zander (&) 10936 N. Port Washington Rd. #285, Mequon, WI 53092-5031, USA e-mail: DrTomZander@aol.com

Reply to Letters Regarding Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and the DSM-V

The on-line publication of our article, ‘‘Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and the DSM-V’’ (Blanchard et al., 2008), quickly prompted the writing of several letters to the editor of this journal. I am writing this letter of reply as sole author, and any inadequacies or inaccuracies in it can be attributed to me alone. The letters by Tromovitch (2008) and DeClue (2008) focus on our recommendation that hebephilia (the erotic preference for pubescent children) be considered for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Tromovitch and DeClue point out that we did not provide a definition of mental disorder, and we did not investigate whether hebephilia would satisfy the definition of mental disorder. That is true. We could and perhaps should have included a statement to this effect: ‘‘The clinical implications of this study depend on the DSM-V using a definition of mental disorder that is similar to the definition supplied in the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, pp. xxxi) and on the future interpretation of that definition as including the erotic preference for physically immature individuals. The sex-research implications of the study, however, do not depend on these outcomes.’’ There is a sense in which Tromovitch’s views accord with the implications of our study. Tromovitch writes that there is no basis for classifying pedophilia (the erotic preference for prepubescent children) as a mental disorder, and that there has been no rationale for including pedophilia in any edition of the DSM. Since pedophilia should not be in the DSM, hebephilia should not be in it either. The clinical implications of our study are essentially the obverse: If pedophilia is included in the DSM, then hebephilia should be included also. Thus, he and we appear to agree that clinical judgments regarding the one preference are relevant to the other. It is difficult to divine whether some of the other letterwriters share Tromovitch’s view, or whether they are willing to accept pedophilia as a psychopathology but not hebephilia. Franklin supports one of her criticisms with a reference to Kleinplatz and Moser (2005), who argued in that paper and in similar papers published elsewhere that all paraphilias should be removed from the DSM. That suggests that Franklin might agree with Tromovitch that neither pedophilia nor hebephilia belongs in the DSM. On the other hand, Franklin argues that erotic attractions to ‘‘young pubescent girls ... are evolutionarily adaptive,’’ which suggests that she might be making some distinction between sexual interest in prepubescent girls and sexual interest in pubescent girls on the basis of fecundity, or on the basis of males’ reproductive strategies for ensuring that they are the fathers of all their mates’ offspring. It is not clear how, or whether, she would apply this distinction to homosexual pedophilia and hebephilia. DeClue registers no objection to the classification of pedophilia as a psychopathology; he is willing to contemplate hebephilia as a psychopathology on the condition that this would produce no increase in the total number of men diagnosed as paraphilic by DSM criteria. He does not explain how this condition squares with his view that erotic preferences should be classified as mental disorders according to some previously stated definition of mental disorder. Zander (2008) appears not to agree with Tromovitch, since he begins his critique with an affirmation of the status quo: ‘‘DSM-IV-TR draws the distinction between pathological and non-pathological age-related sexual arousal at the onset of pubescence: adult arousal to prepubescents is considered R. Blanchard (&) Kurt Freund Laboratory, Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M5T 1R8 e-mail: ray_blanchard@camh.net

Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and the DSM-V

The term pedophilia denotes the erotic preference for prepubescent children. The term hebephilia has been proposed to denote the erotic preference for pubescent children (roughly, ages 11 or 12-14), but it has not become widely used. The present study sought to validate the concept of hebephilia by examining the agreement between self-reported sexual interests and objectively recorded penile responses in the laboratory. The participants were 881 men who were referred for clinical assessment because of paraphilic, criminal, or otherwise problematic sexual behavior. Within-group comparisons showed that men who verbally reported maximum sexual attraction to pubescent children had greater penile responses to depictions of pubescent children than to depictions of younger or older persons. Between-groups comparisons showed that penile responding distinguished such men from those who reported maximum attraction to prepubescent children and from those who reported maximum attraction to fully grown persons. These results indicated that hebephilia exists as a discriminable erotic age-preference. The authors recommend various ways in which the DSM might be altered to accommodate the present findings. One possibility would be to replace the diagnosis of Pedophilia with Pedohebephilia and allow the clinician to specify one of three subtypes: Sexually Attracted to Children Younger than 11 (Pedophilic Type), Sexually Attracted to Children Age 11-14 (Hebephilic Type), or Sexually Attracted to Both (Pedohebephilic Type). We further recommend that the DSM-V encourage users to record the typical age of children who most attract the patient sexually as well as the gender of children who most attract the patient sexually.

IQ, Handedness, and Pedophilia in Adult Male Patients Stratified by Referral Source

This study investigated whether the previously observed association of pedophilia with lower IQs is an artifact of heterogeneity in referral source. The subjects were 832 adult male patients referred to a specialty clinic for evaluation of their sexual behavior. The patients' erotic preferences for prepubescent, pubescent, or adult partners were assessed with phallometric testing. Full scale IQ was estimated using six subtests from the WAIS-R. The results showed that the relations between pedophilia and lower IQ, lesser education, and increased rates of non-right-handedness were the same in homogeneous groups referred by lawyers or parole and probation officers as they were in a heterogeneous group referred by a miscellany of other sources. Those results, along with secondary analyses in the study, supported the conclusion that the relation between pedophilia and cognitive function is genuine and not artifactual. The findings were interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that neurodevelopmental perturbations increase the risk of pedophilia in males.

IQ, Handedness, and Pedophilia in Adult Male Patients Stratified by Referral Source

This study investigated whether the previously observed association of pedophilia with lower IQs is an artifact of heterogeneity in referral source. The subjects were 832 adult male patients referred to a specialty clinic for evaluation of their sexual behavior. The patients' erotic preferences for prepubescent, pubescent, or adult partners were assessed with phallometric testing. Full scale IQ was estimated using six subtests from the WAIS-R. The results showed that the relations between pedophilia and lower IQ, lesser education, and increased rates of non-right-handedness were the same in homogeneous groups referred by lawyers or parole and probation officers as they were in a heterogeneous group referred by a miscellany of other sources. Those results, along with secondary analyses in the study, supported the conclusion that the relation between pedophilia and cognitive function is genuine and not artifactual. The findings were interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that neurodevelopmental perturbations increase the risk of pedophilia in males.

Implicit and Explicit Measurements of Sexual Preference in Gay and Heterosexual Men: A Comparison of Priming Techniques and the Implicit Association Task

The present study examined how well implicit measures were able to predict sexual orientation. Most previous research in the sexual orientation domain has been dependent upon self-report, which requires explicit, conscious awareness of sexual orientation and/or erotic preferences. On the other hand, implicit measurements are thought to be able to reflect immediate automatic reactions that may not be available to introspection. A total of 50 heterosexual and 25 homosexual men completed two implicit measures: the Implicit Association Task (IAT) and the Priming Task (PT). Sexual orientation was determined by self-report. In the PT, participants classified words as either sexually attractive or unattractive. Each word was preceded by a "prime" that was a picture of either a male or a female. The IAT consisted of classifying these same words as sexually attractive or unattractive, and classifying the pictures as either male or female. Both the IAT and the PT had very good ability to predict sexual orientation with Area Under the Curves (AUC) of 0.97 and 0.86, respectively. Unlike many other reports of implicit measures of behavior, the IAT and the PT correlated strongly with each other, and also with the explicit measurements of sexual orientation. It was concluded that these implicit measures can provide a valuable tool for research into sexual orientation and erotic preference that can complement existing measures, such as self-report questionnaires and physiological changes in sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli.

Phallometric Comparison of Pedophilic Interest in Nonadmitting Sexual Offenders Against Stepdaughters, Biological Daughters, Other Biologically Related Girls, and Unrelated Girls

This study compared the mean levels of sexual response to children produced by four groups of men with sexual offences against prepubescent girls and two comparison groups with other offences or no offences. All groups (N = 291) consisted of patients referred for clinical assessment of their sexual behavior or interests. Group assignment was determined by the victim's age and her relation to the patient: biological daughter; stepdaughter; other biologically related girl (e.g., sister, niece, granddaughter); unrelated girl; adult woman; and no known victim. The men with sexual offences had precisely one known victim each. The patients with offences may or may not have denied the act of which they were accused, but all patients denied an erotic preference for children. Sexual response to children was assessed by means of phallometric testing, a psychophysiological technique in which the individual's penile blood volume is monitored while he is presented with a standardized set of laboratory stimuli depicting male and female children and adults. The results indicated that the mean level of pedophilic response in men with offences against daughters or stepdaughters is intermediate between that in men with offences against otherwise-related or unrelated girls and that in men with no offences against girls at all.