Priorities in Male Erotic Activation
and Paraphilias
Priority v erotické aktivaci muže a parafilie
Aleš Kolářský, Slavoj Brichcín
The Psychiatric Hospital, Prague
To the Memory of Kurt Freund
SUMMARY
The growth of knowledge of sex variations has broad theoretical significance. Some human public
displays, commonly considered to be non-sexological in nature, should be recognized as part of a speciesspecific human sexual behavioral system. The priorities of ordinary male erotic activation are certain
moods, or behavioral states. These include: seeking a partner outside one’s original family clan,
demonstrating masculine gender signals and appetizing female signals, and competing for a female. These
and subsequent phases of human proceptivity have priority over erotic intimacy. Although the priority
erotic activations can be accompanied by only small, not-felt genital tumescence, clear-cut preferences
and aversions operate. The essence of the type of sexual orientation is predominantly in these priorities ,
not in genital stimulation. Erotic priorities can differ qualitatively from typical ones (e.g., masochism),
normal priorities can be omitted (e.g., toucherism) or be incomplete („psychosexual underdevelopment"
or „infantilism"). This approach has ethical, political, scientific, clinical-therapeutical and technical
consequences.
Key words: evolutionary psychology, human nature, courtship, proceptivity, sex anomalies, sex crimes,
rape, psychosexual infantilism, phallometry, paraphilia
SOUHRN
Poznávání sexuálních variací má širší teoretický význam. Některé lidské aktivity na veřejnosti, běžně
považované za nesexuální, musejí nyní být uznány za projev lidského, druhově specifického sexuálně
motivačního systému. Prioritami erotické aktivace normálních mužů jsou jistá vyladění, behaviorální
stavy. Zahrnují hledání partnerky mimo vlastní původní rodinu, pohotovost ke zdůrazňování vlastní
pohlavní příslušnosti a apetování signálů ženiny pohlavní příslušnosti, soutěžení o ženu. Tyto a následující
fáze lidské proceptivity mají prioritu před erotikou v ústraní. I když prioritní erotické aktivace mohou být
provázeny jen malými, necítěnými genitálními tumescencemi, působí zde vyhraněné preference a averze.
Podstata typu sexuální orientace je především v obsahu či fungování těchto priorit, nikoli v dráždění
genitálu. Erotické priority se mohou kvalitativně lišit od typických (např. u masochizmu), normální
priority se mohou vynechávat (např. v tušérství) nebo mohou být neúplné (u tzv. psychosexuální
nerozvinutosti či infantilizmu). Tento přístup má etické, politické, vědecké, klinicko-terapeutické a
technické důsledky.
Klíčová slova: evoluční psychologie, lidská přirozenost, dvoření, proceptivita, sexuální anomálie,
sexuální delikty, znásilnění, psychosexuální infantilizmus, falometrie, parafilie
The American Psychiatric Association (1994) defines paraphilias by recurrent deviant sexually arousing
fantasies, urges or behaviors, i.e., by phenomena observable either subjectively or externally. The APA
states, these are „the essential features of paraphilia" (1994 p. 522) or that „the paraphilias are
characterized" by such phenomena (1994, p. 493). Thus, the APA does not necessarilly identify
paraphilias with these observable variables. However, American authors typically do so. For example,
Kafka says that paraphilias „are" (1997 a, p. 343; 1997 b, p. 506) these phenomena. This ignores the
paradigm which we have learned from Kurt Freund during the sixties. According to it, paraphilias are the
inferred guiding mechanisms accounting for the mentioned phenomena. Empirical data (e.g., different
kinds of deviant behavior in a given patient) can be accounted for by constructing a model of a paraphilic
mechanism, which, if valid, is the essence of that patient’s deviancy. The essence cannot be observed for
the time being. We call Freund’s paradigm „the essentialistic concept of paraphilia". Popper (1992, p.105)
concedes such an essentialism. The non- essentialistic considerations concerning deviant behavior, for
example rape, do not care about the internal guiding mechanisms and consequently, do not distinguish
pathological (paraphilic) rape from non-pathological (Malamuth and Heilman, 1998) and the resulting
image of normal human nature in that Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology is contaminated by
pathological material.
We have employed systematically the essentialistic concept and have tried to specify the essence of
some paraphilic syndromes, i.e., focus our sexological research and assessment at finding what potential
sexuality exists in the subject’s brain. This article presents some of the outcomes.
It is crucial that the commonly held assumption that brain is „tabula rasa" with respect to sociosexual
learning be rejected. Instead, we propose a plausible notion of the guiding mechanisms of normal sexual
arousal. The concept of sexual arousal is useful in a descriptive sense but it is misleading when defining an
internal intervening mechanism. The latter denies one of the few certainties we have, i.e., in our brain
there is no arousal mechanism for a unitary sexual drive , but rather a system of partial sexual drives exists
(Madlafousek et al., 1981).
This statement is consistent with the theories of Beach (1976) and Money (1980) and is further
supported by a number of facts (Kolářský, 1996 a). Some female behavior patterns which cause penile
tumescence in ordinary men are mutually contradictory. These include female coy acts (i.e. woman
seductively hiding her genitalia) and actions to reveal genitalia (Kolářský et al., 1978). Paraphilia studies
by Kolářský and Madlafousek (1983) strongly suggest that normal male appetence and learning of both is
based on „endowment", i.e., on inborn disposition (Kolářský, 1996 a). The concept of unitary sex drive
cannot explain this. The argument is based on the comparison of normal men with paraphilics
(exhibitionists). Were female coy pattern and male appetence of it purely learned, then there should be no
problem for exhibitionists to reach the genital display phase after the coy phase. However, for
exhibitionists to act out the genital display phase, it is necessary to leave out the coy phase (Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1983). (After all, human evolution must have developed some „measure" against
habituation from constantly visible female genital in „the naked ape". Here we look for the true and
deepest origin of human endowment for coyness.) The very existence of courtship disorders (Freund et
al., 1983) supports the thesis about the biological origin of some parts of human courtship (Freund’s term
for any non-copulatoty erotic behavior) or proceptivity (Money’s 1980 term for any erotic behavior other
than that involving the genital).
The earliest argument in favor of the systemic (non- unitary) concept of sexuality was a case of a man
with complicated paraphilia described by Freund and Kolářský (1965). This subject preferred masculine
signals like a ;woman in the early proceptivity, but in later stages of sexual interaction showed preference
for a sadistic act against woman’s genitalia.
Sexual variation - „orientation"- manifests itself both subjectively and externally long before the subject
feels any arousal in the genitals. Behavioral states, such as „attraction", „interest", „sympathy" etc., are
accompanied by penile tumescences in humans, which men need not be aware of (Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1972). Nevertheless these early erotic activations are highly important. They are activations
of clear-cut preferences and aversions. The brain classifies, evaluates and selects. The return to non-erotic
behavior from these early erotic activations, i.e., the reclassification of the partner - is easier, compared to
reclassification during felt genital arousal. The brain integrates more information about internal states and
the (external) environment during these introductory erotic activations. First, non-erotic priorities are
inactivated: hunger, thirst, non-erotic antagonisms, the danger of a predator and other kinds of vital tasks thermoregulatory, parental, regenerative and sometimes, social altruistic ones. If that is achieved and the
man is not extremely sad, has not just fallen in love with somone else and is not orgiastically satiated at
the moment, he will be erotically activated.
Incomplete Erotic Priorities
The early activation stage, which Freund defined as the „location of the prospective partner" (Freund et
al., 1983)
and which is part of Money’s (1986) proceptive phase, results from a number of automatic (unconscious)
brain operations. These operations verify that the entity nearby is a living creature of the same species, of
the opposite gender, of fertile age, belonging to a different family clan and not hostile. When these criteria
are met, man will perceive „there is an attractive woman over there" and then display and automatically
emphasize his gender signals testing whether the woman responds by emphasizing her own gender signals.
Desmond Morris (1987, p. 245) illustrates the following scene: Four adolescent or early adult females
form a closed circle at a busy street corner and simultaneously four young men stand in a broader line and
gaze at them. The universal meaning of this scene is, we believe, looking for the partner outside one’s
family clan. Perhaps the English terms „to go out" and „cruising" express that.
There is high biological selectivity in this early activation. Newcomers to a community are viewed with
„curiousity", especially by the opposite gender. Tradition and culture support the inborn tendency to look
for a mate outside one’s clan. There is no taboo to marry a girl from the same village or kibutz. Still mates
are more often selected from a different one. (This phenomenon is shortly referred to as the „kibutz
effect"). Evidently, a normal male brain is likely to process girls raised in the same smaller community as
„related". Originally, the broader family lived together, many of the offspring in the neighborhood were
first generation cousins. (A girl can hardly erotically attract her sexually normal cousin or brother she
grew up with, even if she were a beauty queen. Certainly, her brother cannot fall in love with her.)
Kidnapping women from another clan (tribe) tested man’s courage and skills that were important for
the well- being of his future family. The clan carefully watched whether the prospective foreign
bridegroom was capable of providing his future family with welfare. In some mammals with a harem
reproductive strategy, the leader of the herd examines the assertiveness of a young newcomer male before
allowing him to take his animal daughters away (footnote 1). Human life shows analogous stories. For
example, father does not seem to allow the potential bridegroom of his daughter to enter her home, but he
lets him in, when the young man puts his leg to the closing door. Cultural anthropology provides an
insufficient help for explanation.
There are animal analogies to moral order. In non- human primates, maturing females do not begin
menstruation while still within their original family group. On the other hand, females of other primate
species begin menstruation in their original family, but do not actively solicit sexual behavior from males
of that group (footnote 2). Each species has its own ethology but this diversity represents the manifold
solutions of the same vital tasks.
Morris (1987, p. 242) presents the human female pattern of making her body smaller in the visual field
of the male viewer and exposing the round, i.e., female shapes of her body. We have observed this as well
and believe that these are some of the gender signals of the human female. Gender signals are usually
aimed solely towards men of a different clan. A normal man has no erotic interest in such signals from
his daughter or sister, although he appetizes for them from unrelated women. (Everyday life suggests that
partners who live together for a long time do not send the gender signals to each other any more. Instead,
they go to parties and see each other sending these signals to others. This „entertains", i.e., activates erotic
priorities in gynephilic male participants, but predominantly revives the attractiveness of one partner to
the other).
When a new female appears, perhaps the first potential erotic interest of ordinary men is in her gender
signals. Their penile volume responses („phallograms") to human figures are typically well differentiated
indicating gynephilia. The question is why. We hypothesize that the female body elicits appetence (not
necessarilly a conscious one) of her introductory proceptive (gender) signals which contributes to a well
differentiated gynephilic phallogram. The normal man’s phallogram would be less differentiated as
gynephilic if he perceived emotional expression of women in the stimulus slides as anti-erotic. Female
neutral, non-erotic activity alone inhibits the normal men’s penile volume response to such a film scene
(Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1972). Certainly, an angry or otherwise anti-erotic appearance of a woman
makes it difficult for a man to yearn her gender signals or other proceptive patterns.
We have assessed the sexuality of a sex offender whose phallogram was less differentiated as
gynephilic, although the women in the stimulus slides had no anti-erotic expression and the offender liked
them. His history was clearly gynephilic. He was normally attractive for women. However, he had little or
no interest in initial proceptivity, no need to see his female partner as normally desirable and sending
gender signals according to what the subject disclosed. This must be crucial, as his erotic needs did not
force him out of his household to find a woman to form a pair bond with. Instead, his non-erotic
interactions at home with his 10 years old step-daughter turned into petting sessions. When she was nearly
15, he asked her for coitus, insisting that she would be willing to perform coitus with him if she had
copulated with her boyfriend. The offender was hardly always drunk when abusing her. Certainly he was
not under the influence of alcohol during the phallometric testing. This subject was not pedophilic - he
exhibited no pedophilic proceptivity (e.g. no interest in „teaching" children etc.). His phallogram of penile
responses to categories of human figures is in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1: Each point ilustrates the penile volume increase in mililitres
to an individual stimulus slide. Each stimulus category is in a separate row.
Digits indicate the age of persons in the slides. „A" stands for adults.
The general level of penile responsivity at the time of assessment was not lower compared to a case
presented in figure 2. We interpreted data in figure 1 as follows: The brain of this subject has incomplete
erotic priorities. Some of the criteria of normal partner choice specified above are either absent or their
appropriate evocation (priming) does not work. Normal functioning of these criteria would help
considerably to exclude a pubescent girl with still incomplete proceptivity and belonging to his household
from the category of potential partners. The psychiatric diagnosis in this case was subnormal intelligence,
psychopathic personality, alcoholic dependency. However, we maintain that this unfavourable condition
alone does not explain the subject’s long-term anomalous partner choice. The sexual behavioral system
must be altered. Non-sexological psychopathology provides insufficient explanation in this case as it did
with exhibitionists, who - until Laségue (1877) - were also considered to be merely depraved.
The Atypical Erotic Priorities
The erotic priorities of the subject described in the previous section are not qualitatively different from
those of ordinary men. The erotic priorities differ qualitatively in the case of a true heterosexual
pedophiliac, whose phallogram is in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2: Each point ilustrates the penile volume increase to an individual stimulus slide.
Each stimulus category is in a separate row. Squares represent male
gender of persons in the slides, black symbols indicate children,
semi-black symbols adolescent age and empty symbol adult age.
The two symbols for female children represent younger and older children.
Our interpretation of data in Fig. 2 was that the pictures of female children assume a leading position
because they evoke appetence of child-like behavior patterns, i.e. they evoke pedophilic erotic priorities.
As a music teacher, this non-aggressive subject was spending many unpaid hours of innocent, beneficial
work with prepubescent girls. ¨
To recognize the atypical (qualitatively different) erotic priorities, we should be well aware of the
importance of normal ones. There is always some courtship in sexual encounters, even if the subject is
unable to report it. A ;normal males’ arousal due to female intimate sexual behavior needs erotic
preparation (Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1983). The erotic potential of an intimate female behavioral
pattern cannot be exploited fully with no antecedence (Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1977).
Female courtship patterns - as verified by phallometry with normal men - such as ogling (Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1972, p. 114) or coyness (Kolářský et al., 1978) have also been published in Morris’
„Manwatching" (1987) on page 71 and on pages 134 and 135 respectively. (In 1978 we used the term „
seductive pseudoretreat" for coyness.) Morris (1987) also shows a wide range of the lovers’ activities in
public such as embracing, sharing a glass in public, and a man feeding a woman in a playful way. Couples
wearing a dress from the same fabric cloth can be seen thus signalling to others „we belong together"
(gibbons send this message vocally). We have observed female facial response to man’s behavior in
public. Reproduced for us by a professional actress upon request, the examples are in Figures 3 and 4. We
observed a positive phallometric effect of these pictures on normal men.
Fig 3: Admiration
Fig 4: Pounting
At least some of the described normal courtship patterns may not be purely learned, as suggested by
studies of their contrasting effect upon deviates with courtship disorders (Kolářský, 1996 a).
Female gender signals facilitate a man’s erotic response to her more advanced proceptivity patterns.
The former have priority over the latter. The latter, in turn, have priority over erotic intimacy, i.e. over the
acceptive phase (Money’s term for the appetitive concentration on the partner’s genitals). Male gender
signals („making shoulders", i.e. frontal display of man’s trunk, men making themselves „broader" by
extending elbows and legs, their courage and skills serving the woman, their daring venture, their status
and property displays etc.) „inspire" a normal woman in contrast to the opposites and can be associated
with male appetence of female gender or other proceptive signals. Typically, such erotic priorities
contribute significantly to the definition of the essence of a given type of sexual orientation in clinical
practise. Let us recall the contrasting preferences for, and aversions of gender signals as revealed by
clinical explorations of gynephiles and androphiles. Here, no bisexuality exists.
The true essence of sexual orientation is not visible. Mutual manual stimulation of the penis by two
men, say in prison, can be a continuation of the activation of homosexual (androphilic) priorities in one of
them and concomitant to fantasized heterosexual (gynephilic) priorities in the other. Each of them is
guided by different priorities and this means an essentially different sexual orientation.
Similarly, the lay question whether biting during coitus means sadism, can be answered. A copulating
and biting sadist starts from a very different priority state compared to a copulating and biting ordinary
man. And this also differentially shapes the two kinds of biting. Let us also remind the reader with specific
masochistic priorities for genital stimulation. Genital stimulation by itself need not much differ from that
of ordinary people.
One cannot understand sexual variations without the introductory proceptivity. The terms „love"
and „lovesickness" (Money, 1980) implied that. Aggressive offenders against children are erroneously
called pedophiles although the determinants of the offense (the priorities) are often non-pedophilic.
(During the Prague East- West Conference on Child Abuse and Sexual Violence in 1996, pedophilia was
identified with „power" over the child without the possibility to publicly discuss this doubtful thesis.)
Priority eroticism can help to discover sex anomalies so far not known and can facilitate better
understanding marital problems (e.g., frustration of the spouse’s priority needs). Problems of love and
erotic jealousy are predominantly concerned with erotic priorities (courtship).
Omitted Erotic Priorities
Kurt Freund initiated a fruitful approach to the study of exhibitionism, toucherism, frotteurism,
voyeurism and rape proneness (Freund and Kolářský, 1965). Later, these were labelled as courtship
disorders (Freund et al., 1983). John Money speaks about „displacement paraphilias", because some
courtship pattern are displaced (footnote 3). Some part of the sexual behavioral inventory that normally
has priority is omitted, and a subsequent part assumes its place in an interaction with the victim. Nothing
alien to normal sexuality is embedded in the offender’s sexuality (Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1980, 1983;
Madlafousek et al., 1985). Everything from normal female erotic behavioral inventory tested with
ordinary men on the phallograph has a positive effect on these deviates - on exhibitionists (Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1983) as well as on the majority of those offenders who touch or rape their victim
(Madlafousek et al., 1985). Incompleteness of erotic priorities is the case in only less frequent a
sub-category of aggressive sex offenders against women (Kolářský, 1996 a). Therefore, our
conceptualization of the majority’s peculiarity is that some normal sexual subsystem is kept inactive,
while more advanced part of the system is carried out (Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1983; Kolářský, 1996
a).
Keeping some erotic components inactive makes female non-erotic behavior particularly significant for
the anomalous offender. Indeed, non-erotic neutral activity of the actress in the film scene (household
work) does not decrease its phallometric effect on the paraphilic offender - in contrast to normal controls
(Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1972). In the case of dangerous offenders against females, not even female
non-erotic emotional behavior (anger, true resistance or behavior of a prey) inhibits the penile response
(Kolářský, 1996 a). Fig. 5 shows the subcategories of non-eroticism.
Fig. 5: The Subcategories of non-eroticism.
Non-erotic emotional behavior has some elements in common with intimate human sexual behavior e.g., groaning of a victimized person and orgiastic vocalization. The anomalous offender receives this
stimulus within the context of utmost anti-erotic interaction with the woman - almost predation. Similarly,
the altered breathing of a struggling raped woman can be processed by the offender’s brain as an element
of coital passion - again within an anti-erotic, trully aggressive context. Normal erotic proceptivity and the
integrity of the whole normal sexual behavioral system makes such an error considerably less likely. This
explains, why the likelihood for a sexually anomalous offender to offend, is significantly increased,
compared to that of an ordinary man. Here we can see that the integrity of the normal sexual behavioral
system itself significantly helps ordinary men not to commit a sex offense. Indeed, the majority of men do
not commit it. Even the great majority of men who commit other criminal acts do not commit a sex
offense. It is necessary to carefully examine the sex offender’s sexual behavioral system first before
speculating about non-sexual factors alone, e.g., about „inability to postpone gratification." Such an
interpretation rests on the invalid concept of a unitary sex drive. The ways we explore sexuality of sex
offenders is described elsewhere (Kolářský, 1996 b).
Because of omitting some erotic priorities, the sexually anomalous offender leaves out the relatively
slow process of testing and selecting the partner. This evidently can account for the fact noticed by Abel
(footnote 4) that 26 % of rapists start by victimizing a female child. Certainly, with respect to the
arguments presented above, they are not true pedophiles. For such an offender, the female child has the
„advantage" of not evoking interest in certain normal adult courtship components (i.e., not activating
some priority sexual sub-system) which would hamper the continuation of the arousing process.
Consequently, the phallogram of such an offender can be pedophilia-like.
The same inferred sexual anomaly (essence) operates in an offender when he commits different kinds
of sexual offenses. One example: A true exhibitionist is an indecent exposurer who typically avoids
physical contact with his victim at the time of his sexually motivated exposure (Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1983). When he sometimes commits a toucheristic act, he enters „the body buffer zone" of
the victim (i.e. he approaches her for touching) for a short moment only. Perceiving signs of her resistance
would interfere with his unrealistic fantasy that the woman is willing to show him her genitals. (Genital
display is what a true exhibitionist wants from his victim according to the study of Kolářský and
Madlafousek, 1983). Toucherism of non-exhibitionists is different, more aggressive. This type of offender
spends more time in the body buffer zone of the victim, perceiving her resistance. A different sexual
subsystem is acted out by his offense.
Different types of sex offenses which a particular paraphiliac can commit, are combined in a
non-random way (footnote 5). This is another manifestation of the systemic nature of sexuality. Different
sub-systems operate during the offenses of exhibitionists, frotteurs, non-exhibitionistic touchers and of
pathological rapists and sex murderers. Their paraphilias teach us about components of the normal human
sexual behavioral system (Kolářský, 1996 a).
The Consequences of the Erotic Priorities Concept
1) The study of psychosexual anomalies makes it necessary to accept new paradigms of behavioral
science. The growth of knowledge in the field of sexual variations has a broader theoretical significance.
For this reason it would be least adequate to rely solely on older approaches particularly in the field of
sexual variations.
Understanding both typical and atypical sexual orientation requires that some human acts and
interactions in public, previously subsumized under non-sexological concepts, are recognized as part of
species specific human sexuality. The essence of typical and atypical sexual variations is outside the area
traditionally labeled as sexuality. Either some of the priorities themselves or their integrity with the
acceptive phase are altered.
(The integrity of the acceptive phase itself can also be disturbed. That is the case of extremely
dangerous paraphilias in which not even desire for woman’s pelvic movements is associated with
intravaginal friction - Kolářský, 1996 a).
2) The subject matter of sexological exploration proper is not personality, but rather an inferred sexual
behavioral system in the brain. Paraphilias are not primarilly personality alterations. Oedipus or other
complexes themselves are the superstructure of the underlying sexual anomaly (Kolářský, 1996 a), as
Sigmund Freud himself anticipated (1926). The application of personality constructs to paraphilics is
highly risky from the epistemological point of view, because the tacit assumption of the validity of some
personality constructs is sexual normality, and it is undesirable from the ethical and therapeutical point of
view, because almost all the names of these constructs have some derogatory meaning (Kolářský, 1996 a).
See for example the above-mentioned „inability to postpone gratification", or „emotional immaturity",
„lack of social skills" etc. In the area of specific deviant interest, the paraphilic subject shows no deficits
of maturity or skills. Psychology of personality is in danger of becoming an instrument of the authoritarian
part of the erotic majority. This discipline should acknowledge plurality of social standards. A deficiency
in normal courtship skills must not be generalized as a deficiency in all social skills. The erotic majority
tends to hide its courtship preferences under the terms of social maturity and social skills.
3) Intimate sexual phenomena, such as preferred coital positions, the way of stimulating the genital, is
not the chief topic when exploring sexual orientation from whatever data source (interviewing,
phallometry, analysis of partners’ or victims’ reports). Rather, the chief topic should be conditions for
starting erotic activations, their content and properties. This needs more research and development. We
cannot be satisfied with the current status of phallometry and hence we reject suggestions to
„standardize", i.e., petrify the present status. Potentially, an unrecognized power of phallometry lies in
new experimental designs that include different sequences of stimuli (Kolářský and Madlafousek, 1983;
Kolářský, 1996 a, b) in accordance with the systemic concept of sexuality.
We cannot blame phallograms for not agreeing with the poor (e.g., mere legal) criteria of paraphilia. In
the future, a ;more detailed knowledge of human sexual behavioral system is needed for understanding its
anomalies. Phallometry is a research method. Its contribution to clinical practise depends on the theory of
the phallometrist. The systemic theory of sexuality (Madlafousek et al., 1981) is the most important
component of our clinical sexodiagnostics.
4) Erotic priorities determine penile tumescence, some of which the subject does not feel. The
phallometric curve may seem to reflect only quantitative changes of the arousal. This would be a
non-systemic, unitary interpretation. Using the copulatory organ for measurements does not mean that we
measure a unitary copulatory interest. The possibility should be left open that, as penile volume grows,
different sexual behavioral subsystems get activated, resulting in different levels of penile volume. Hence,
a) the weak volume discrimination of human figures in case of reduced selectivity because of
incomplete erotic priorities,
b) the potentially strong abrupt volume response of violent offenders to pictures of women. Here, some
advanced part of the system gets abruptly activated in an anti-erotic context (Kolářský, 1996 a). The
unitary concept of sexuality would erroneously interpret this pheno-menon as a manifestation of
hypersexuality.
All phallometric devices can monitor erection. However, only some devices can detect the early stages
of erotic activation. For this reason we emphasize the need to measure the whole range of penile volume
changes and to do so on an interval scale.
5) The therapeutic usefulness of the outlined strategy is suggested by the fact that recidivism of sex
offenders treated in our hospital (which was 10 percent after follow-up ranging from one to ten years)
included not a single case of the most violent sex offenses (brutal rape, sex murder). The number of
offenders treated was higher than 300. Perhaps the ideas outlined in this paper have helped detection of
potentially violent offenders, who were guided to take responsibility for the manifestation of their risky
disorder.
We offered the possibility of voluntary orchiectomy. Thirteen percent were offered castration and applied
for it. It would be highly risky to rely on psychotherapy alone in these cases. (We are aware of the ethical
issues involved.)
Logically, the study of the offender’s sexual behavioral system must precede any therapy aimed at
helping the subject to gain true insight into his condition. We should study the exhibitionist’s arousing
process first in order to find its interruptions after the coy component of courtship. Such an interruption
would then explain the exhibitionist’s distorted cognition that the coy female partner rejects him as erotic
partner. It would also explain why he has an association between his mother and his sex partner during
psychoanalysis. Insight, the acceptance of the essential sexual anomaly and possible inventive quest for
legal and satisfying, though unconventional sexual outlet could perhaps be reached by the subject’s
attitudinal shift from restrictive authoritarianism, typical for sex offenders, to recognition of and respect
for plurality and individualism (Kolářský et al., 1984). Here, the engagement of non-sexologists is
welcomed.
PhDr. Aleš Kolářský, CSc.
Psychiatrická léčebna
Ústavní 91
181 02 Praha 8-Bohnice
Do redakce došlo dne: 8. července 1998
Přijato k publikaci dne: 26. ledna 1999
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Footnotes
1) Madlafousek J., personal communication 1997.
2) French JA., presentation at the 1988 meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research.
3) Money J., personal communication 1989.
4) Abel G., presentation at the 1987 meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research.
5) Kolářský A., Madlafousek J., presentation at the conference of The Czechoslovak Sociological
Association On Social Pathology, Alšovice 1983.