NCJ Number
222212
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 52 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2008 Pages: 185-195
Date Published
April 2008
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study investigated the defense styles of pedophiles.
Abstract
Results show that pedophiles had lower overall defense of functioning scores on the Defense Mechanisms Ratings Scales than the controls. The results suggest that pedophiles use more pathological defenses than outpatients, including more image-distorting and action defenses, and fewer obsessional-level defenses. Overall, defense mechanisms used by child abusers are generally less mature; even though they used significantly fewer obsessional-level defenses, more immature defenses such as major image-distorting or action-level defenses were employed. More specifically, the findings suggest the child abusers use less intellectualization, a cognitive strategy where the individual deals with emotional conflicts through the excessive use of abstract thinking. The child abusers in the sample also tended to use less rationalization, which involves devising plausible-sounding and self-serving excuses and reasons to cover up facts and motives that one wishes to hide. Instead, the abusers used defense mechanisms such as disassociations, displacement, fantasies, and splitting and projective identification. Finally, the findings suggest that users used more acting out and passive-aggression than the control group. Data were collected from 20 male pedophile sexual offenders between 25 and 46 years of age who had been sentenced to a Federal penitentiary term following the sexual abuse of children, having molested victims outside their family, having never committed murder, and having never abused teenagers between 12 and 17 years. Tables, references