part0018

The late sexologist Kurt Freund proposed that voyeurism (a sexual preference for watching an unsuspecting person engage in normally private activities such as undressing, bathing, or having sex), exhibitionism (a sexual preference for exposing one’s genitals to an unsuspecting person), frotteurism (a sexual preference for rubbing one’s genitals against a nonconsenting stranger), and biastophilia (a preference for sexual coercion, which he referred to as “preferential rape”) are distortions of the normal courtship process in men (Freund, 1990). The term courtship is drawn from the ethological literature and refers to the sequence of dyadic interactions that precede and initiate sexual intercourse. Freund thought these distortions reflected disturbances in a male mating system that consisted of four phases: (a) a finding phase, consisting of locating and appraising a potential sexual partner; (b) an affiliative phase, consisting of nonverbal and verbal gestures such as looking, smiling, and talking to a potential partner; (c) a tactile phase, in which physical contact is made with the partner; and (d) a copulatory phase, in which sexual intercourse with the partner occurs. (This does not mean women are passive observers or recipients of men’s efforts; women are active participants in human courtship; e.g., Givens, 1978; Greer & Buss, 1994; Perper, 1989.) Voyeurism can be viewed as a distortion of the finding phase, exhibitionism as a distortion of the affiliative phase, frotteurism as a distortion of the tactile phase, and biastophilia as a distortion of the copulatory phase. In other words, these four paraphilias can be seen as different manifestations of the same underlying courtship disorder.

If the four paraphilias do reflect a common underlying disturbance, one might expect them to co-occur frequently (Abel et al., 1988; Bradford et al., 1992). Using conditional probabilities that another paraphilic activity would be present given the presence of a particular activity, my colleagues and I found support for the theory of courtship disorder with regard to voyeurism, exhibitionism, and frotteurism (Freund & Seto, 1998; Freund et al., 1997). These paraphilias were more likely to co-occur with each other than they were to co-occur with either sadism or masochism. However, the conditional probabilities of these three paraphilias with rape were smaller than their conditional probabilities with each other. There are a number of other challenges for Freund’s theory of courtship disorder. Although it is elegant, the theory does not specify the putative mechanisms of regulatory disturbance, and the theory is difficult to test empirically beyond showing an elevated rate of co-occurrence among these particular paraphilias.