Subject(s)
Sexual Behavior , Violence , Adolescent , Adult , Aggression/psychology , Child , Female , Gender Identity , Humans , Male , Psychosexual Development , RapeABSTRACT
Splitting up of psychiatry into a forensic and a psychotherapeutic branch is unjustified as far as the scope of these branches is concerned, and entails a disadvantage at the expense of the delinquents, since nobody feels he is therapeutically responsible. Therapeutic aspects in expertising are worked out, and the specific difficulties and conflicts between forensic and therapeutic problems are demonstrated. Anyone who believes that therapeutic identity cannot be reconciled with legislation concerned with culpability, suffers from the prejudice induced by a "blind spot" in his mental eye.
Subject(s)
Forensic Psychiatry , Mental Disorders/therapy , Psychotherapy , Adult , Homicide , Humans , Insanity Defense , Male , Mental Disorders/diagnosis , Professional-Patient Relations , Psychoanalytic TherapySubject(s)
Prisoners/psychology , Psychotherapy , Behavior , Humans , Prognosis , Psychotherapy/methods , Sex Offenses , Sociology, MedicalABSTRACT
From 1962 to 1979, 74 men and one woman considered sexually abnormal have received surgical hypothalamotomies in the Federal Republic of Germany. This paper reviews the neurophysiological assumptions behind the surgery, the criteria for surgery, and the effects and side effects of surgery as far as has been documented by medical, psychiatric, psychological, sexual, and social data. The neurophysiological bases for hypothalamotomies on humans with deviant sexual behavior appear dubious, the indications make use of questionable scientific and clinical categories and assumptions, few reliable data have been submitted for side effects, and follow-up studies are based on poor methodology. Restrictive regulations against this type of "experimental therapy" are suggested.
