Posted by Carol on March 18, 2004 at 19:40:42
In Reply to: Re: Offender Typologies posted by Jules on March 18, 2004 at 17:51:03:
Jules, you've actually thought a great deal more about this than I have. Most of what I know about offenders comes from the literature, which is why I threw together some of the basics from web sources. I've had very, very limited experience working with or observing sexual offenders.
Some people argue that sadists are not sex offenders; it's the same line of reasoning that says rape is not about sex, it's about violence, domination, control & humiliation. Some folks I know who are into BDSM say something similar about their role-playing--that it's not about sex, it's about power & trust. In any event, I've only recently begun to think about the sadism that played out in The Family's culture of dominance, submission, trust & betrayal, so I want to table that topic for the time being.
A lot of what you theorize about is something I tend to think of as "maps"--there are "love maps" of neural pathways that play out in the kinds of people we're attracted to. There are arousal or sex maps that play out in the kinds of stimuli that turn us on.
For some people, the arousal maps are more fluid and change over time. I am not aroused by the same kind of stimuli as a post-menopausal woman as I was during young adulthood. The maps or neural pathways of arousal seem to be influenced by endocrines, but this process is not well understood. For some people, the arousal maps are more rigid and fixated.
I think fixated arousal patterns can be linked to maps that get laid down in childhood as well as later in life. Regardless of when the neural pathways get hooked up, fixated arousal patterns seem to be related to addictive processes in the brain. So it is a complex interaction of nature and nurture--some people have a propensity and learned behavior is significant.
The most current research that's coming out on sexual offending draws some very strong parallels to what is known about addiction. Your observation that "when someone is under the influence of a substance their brain chemistry is radically altered" has some relevance. If you "have learned the hard way that you should throw out everything you know about a person in that state," then I would suggest that we should throw out everything we think we know about a person who is in a sexually aroused state who has (for any number of reasons) lowered inhibitions against acting on impulse.
"Lowered inhibitions" is a key idea here, and when adults in TF were encouraged, pressured, or coerced into a wide range of deviant behavior, they no doubt laid down some arousal maps that have pretty much stuck with them over time. I agree with many of your conclusions along this line.
One other matter to think about is the relationship between anxiety and arousal. Addicts have a great deal of trouble self-regulating their mood states are particularly prone to act on their impluses under conditions of increased anxiety. The research on compulsive sexual behavior suggests that acting out is closely tied to fluxuating anxiety states. One of the most striking things about environment in TF are the recurring cycles of extreme anxiety. In fact, the manipulation of anxiety states by leadership--their ability to provoke fear, dread & loathing--is to be a major control tactic.
Dissociation is a common response to anxiety. Dissociation can be understood as a splitting off or partitioning of parts of the mind. Rape & incest victims often dissociate as a way of coping with situations over which they have no control. The sexually compulsive person, which is what many offenders are, also tends to act out in a dissociated state. In other words, there is a loss of impulse control that gets triggered by anxiety-provoking stimuli.
I went into all this business about anxiety & dissociation & loss of impulse control because it seems to the best explanatory model for what happened to a lot of FGs living in Family under Berg's influence. It's basically a theoretical model of how people who have been traumatized become victimizers. Not everyone who has been traumatized becomes a victimizer; however, a lot of people do.