The Dilemma of the Sexual Offender

Book excerpt: It has been over ten years since the release of the first edition. Over this time span, the dilemmas for the sexual offender - including their visceral and virtual manifestations - have captured the imagination of the public, have rewritten the subdiscipline of behavioral sciences and the law, and have led to new technologies in the assessment, diagnostic, and treatment decision sciences. These dilemmas circulate in the marketplace of conspicuous digital consumerism that stylizes and commercializes the sex offender industry through society’s ubiquitous infotainment-driven and carnival-like outlets. This second edition will act as the antidote to the voyeurism that addictively feeds on the dramatizations that caricature the victims, assailants, and predicaments that constitute the dilemmas for the sexual offender. The authors systematically probe and dissect the boundaries of their topic with erudition and insight. This acumen consists of psychiatric, legal, moral, and bio-social realms of inquiry and analysis. Old questions about the nature of evil, women in society, violence and mental illness, and treatment and recovery receive fresh attention based on the latest empirical evidence. New chapters address emergent forms of deviant sexuality (e.g., cyber-offending, erotic and sadistic psychopathy, and child-molesting clergy). New sections illuminate existing forms of aberrant sexuality (e.g., moral development and necrophilia, moral reasoning and sex offenders, and the psychodynamics of serialized lust murder). This state-of-the-art text, replete with cutting-edge case illustrations, demonstrates how medicine, law, and culture are inextricably (and sometimes inexplicably) bound together. It will serve as an outstanding resource for psychiatrists, lawyers, criminologists, policy analysts, and forensic mental health professionals as the authors expertly reveal the world of sexual offenders.