A Brief History of Behavioral and Cognitive Behavioral Approaches to Sexual Offenders: Part 1. Early Developments

Abstract

This is the first of two papers which briefly outline the development of behavioral and cognitive behavioral treatment of sexual offenders from the mid-1800s to 1969. We first consider the historic role of Sigmund Freud and note that a broad scientific interest in deviant sexual behaviour was well established by 1900. In the early to mid-20th century, two psychologies were prominent in the development of behaviorial approaches, those of John B. Watson and Alfred Kinsey. Behavior therapy for a variety of problems emerged in the 1950s and soon found application to deviant sexuality. The development of penile plethysmography helped to focus interest on deviant sexual preference and behavior. While nonbehavioral approaches to sexual offenders paralleled these developments, a combination of behavioral and cognitive behavioral treatments began to emerge in the late 1960s which ultimately developed into the approaches more commonly seen today.

A Brief History of Behavioral and Cognitive Behavioral Approaches to Sexual Offender Treatment: Part 2. The Modern Era

“…As seen in our earlier paper (Laws & Marshall, 2001) on the development of behavioral approaches to treating and assessing sexual offenders, Kurt Freund had described phallometric procedures as early as the 1950s. His procedure for assessing gender preferences was outlined in a 1957 paper and he later modified this to evaluate child molesters (Freund, 1965).…”

The use of olfactory aversion and directed masturbation in modifying deviant sexual interest: A case study

“…Laws et al (1978) measured the response of sexual sadists to sadistic stimuli with valeric acid using PPG technologies and found significant changes following intervention. However, despite its popular use in measuring deviant arousal, critics have questioned the validity of phallometric measures for not defining clearly what is being measured and lacking in standardization (Laws, 2003;. In their research, Marshall, Anderson and Fernandez (2000) note that phallometric measures are more effective when used with other means of evaluation, especially when determining the effectiveness of the intervention and the likelihood of relapse.…”

Olfactory Aversion and Directed Masturbation in the Modification of Deviant Preferences

“…He claimed effective results but offered no satisfactory data to support this claim. In fact, despite the application over many years and its current widespread use (Marshall & Laws, 2003), there remains to this day a dearth of convincing supportive evidence (Laws & Marshall, 2003). In the present case, olfactory aversion was instituted to reduce the evocativeness of deviant sexual acts, and directed masturbation was used to enhance sexual interest in appropriate activities.…”