Drug or alcohol consumption, loitering, gambling, cockfighting, hate speech, blasphemy, possession of weapons, euthanasia, flag burning, smoking, spitting, contraception, abortion, nudity, indecent exposure, erotic art, obscenity, pornography, prostitution, adultery, polygamy, homosexual as well as heterosexual ‘sodomy’ (oral or anal intercourse), sexual sadomasochism, or bestiality all provide vivid examples. Yet many acts have, at one time or another, met with penal sanctions despite the speculative nature of the harm they cause.
It would seem that a just society should punish only those acts that cause harm. Nemo punitur sine injuria, no one is punished except for wrongdoing. Heinze, in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition), 2012 Introduction In this respect, sexual offenses are construed as sexual (or partly sexually motivated) acts perpetrated on an unwilling victim or on a person who is considered unable to give consent (e.g., a child or a severely disabled person).Į. In this chapter the behaviors considered are described in generic terms as follows: exhibitionism, voyeurism, frotteurism, child molestation, and sexual assault (i.e., sexual attacks on adults). Worse than that, this conflict between legal proscriptions and diagnostic criteria presents serious problems for researchers, and particularly for reviewers attempting to assimilate the literature, in identifying the population samples.
Unfortunately, many sexual offenders do not meet the diagnostic criteria for paraphilia and this presents a dilemma for clinicians who typically see a need to treat all sexual offenders whether or not they can be given a diagnosis. In addition, the category of sadism may involve behaviors that break the law (where the putative masochistic partner is an unwilling participant). DSM-IV also lists under “Sexual disorders not otherwise specified” additional behaviors that are illegal: necrophilia (sex with a corpse), bestiality ( sex with animals), and scatologia (obscene phone calls).
#Sex with animal s manual
The American Psychiatric Association's (1994) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV) lists under the category of “Paraphilias” a limited set of behaviors that are legally proscribed (i.e., exhibitionism, voyeurism, frotteurism, and pedophilia). The legal and diagnostic systems differ in their identification of sexual offenders, with the legal system being far more inclusive.
Marshall, in Comprehensive Clinical Psychology, 1998 9.25.1 Introduction