Behavioral Control Models in Managing Sexual Deviance

How does sexual deviance develop?

“…Allen et al, 2020;Gannon et al, 2019;McPhail & Olver, 2020;Smid, 2021). Such behavioral techniques, for instance, rely on (re)conditioning of the sexual response (McGrath et al, 2010;Ware et al, 2021), modeling and shaping of desired behavior, or experience-based exercises such as role play to practice different viewpoints (Fernandez et al, 2006;Gannon, 2016). The case below provides an example of a behavioral reconditioning technique called closed sensitization, relying on the client to rehearse the chain of events leading to deviant sexual arousal.…”

“…Likewise, a meta-analysis showed that conditioning techniques effectively decreased pedophilic and hebephilic sexual arousal (McPhail & Olver, 2020). Broadly speaking, conditioning techniques aim to either pair an aversive stimulus with deviant sexual arousal, or pair reward with normative sexual arousal (Ware et al, 2021). McPhail and Olver (2020) looked at effects of specific conditioning interventions.…”

“…It was, for instance, found that disgust reduced the subsequent physiological (but not self-reported) sexual response to a heterosexual erotic film in heterosexual women (Fleischman et al, 2015). Counterconditioning techniques to reduce deviant sexual arousal rely on this mechanism, such as olfactory aversion or covert sensitization (see Table 1) (McGrath et al, 2010;Ware et al, 2021).…”