Forensic Psychology For Dummies (94 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
An obsession with sex, giving it a prominence that goes beyond normal adult interest.
paraphilias,
which are unusual objects or situations that cause sexual arousal, such a shoe-fetish, bondage, making obscene phone calls or voyeurism.
Psychosexual tests in action
A 20-year-old man was accused of raping and killing a young woman he’d met at a nightclub and taken back to her house. The police called in an FBI agent to comment on whether the assault was part of a sexually deviant fantasy. The agent looked at the crime scene photographs and autopsy report and said that the killing was sexually sadistic: in other words, the offender had got sexual excitement from the killing. This assessment implied that the offender was extremely dangerous. In the particular jurisdiction the person would have had to spend perhaps 12 years in prison if found guilty of murder but much longer, twenty or thirty years, if the killing was thought to be part of sexually sadistic fantasies. Indeed, he may have been regarded as so dangerous that he would never be let out of prison.
I was called in by the defence to establish whether the individual was a deviant, sexually sadistic person. I interviewed him carefully, exploring his life history and giving him a standardised test of his sexual fantasies. From the results, I formed the view that he came from a background in which outbursts of violence were to be expected, but that he had no deviant sexual fantasies or experiences. Therefore, I argued that the FBI report was mistaken and the offender wasn’t a sexual killer. On the basis of my report, the prosecution withdrew the FBI report from the court and the defendant admitted to the murder. He was given a life sentence, which meant he would spend a minimum of ten years in prison.
Examining the Inability to Relate: Psychopathy
A crucial aspect of assessing the psychology of offenders connects to their personality, that is, their enduring characteristics and the broad way in which they relate to other people and deal with the world. (Flip to Chapter 9 for a fuller discussion on personality.)
Some people’s personality is so unusual that they’re regarded as being ‘disordered’ in some way (which is different from the person having a mental illness). Of course, not all such people necessarily commit crimes. They may just be regarded as strange and perhaps quite distressed about why, as they see it, other people don’t relate to them effectively.