Consequences of Sexual Violence and Abuse On Minors: Gender Specifics

The article presents the results of a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric study of 155 juvenile victims of sexual violence and abuse. The article states the most common psychological consequences of experienced sexual violence and abuse in various spheres of mental activity among groups of boys and girls. The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of these consequences have significant differences in the groups of victims, depending on the mental condition and gender. It was found that common symptoms are manifested in the emotional-volitional, semantic and behavioral spheres. The gender specifics of the consequences of sexual violence and abuseamong girls mostly appear in internal forms (feelings of guilt, difficulties in establishing social contacts, negative attitude to male role models, close relationships). While external forms of that consequences prevail among boys (increased excitability, reactions aggression, opposition and negativism, sexualized behavior, hypermasculine compensation) alongside increased mental stress, sense of shame, violation of gender-role identity, complaints of disturbance in the somatic sphere and a decrease of productivity in school.

Evolutionary biology: an essential basic science for the training of the next generation of psychiatrists

SummaryEvolutionary science can serve as the high-level organising principle for understanding psychiatry. Evolutionary concepts generate new models and ideas for future psychiatric study, research, policy and therapy. The authors accordingly make the case for the inclusion of evolutionary biology in the postgraduate education of psychiatric trainees.

Introduction

This introductory chapter discusses the primary focus of psychiatry and how phenomenological psychopathology in particular serves as the basis for psychiatry. It argues that psychiatry is not only a biological discipline. It must maintain an intense concern with the quality of patients’ experiences by focusing on the “psyche” and not just the brain, which is of interest to psychiatry only insofar as it helps one better understand the relevant psychic phenomena. Thus, one must investigate the relationship between these subjective experiences, the brain, and the way we classify psychiatric disorders. In this light, phenomenological psychopathology becomes increasingly central to these discussions. At present, the psychiatric study of psyche and subjectivity is defined mainly by changes in experience and behavior. Therefore, psychopathology, the discipline that assesses and makes sense of the suffering psyche, is at the heart of psychiatry.

Sadomasochism in the Genesis of Violent Sexual Behavior

The last few years have witnessed a considerable increase in the share of persons guilty of violent sexual crimes who have been diagnosed with sexual preferences’ disorders in the form of sadomasochism. There has been a growth in quantitative and a change in qualitative indices of violent sexual crimes which are manifested in more brutal violence, greater physical harm, causing extra suffering not aimed at overcoming the victim’s resistance but acting as a source of additional sexual stimulation. A considerable share of crimes (86 %) is connected with torturing and humiliating victims. These facts testify that there is a correlation between the escalation of sexual violence and sexual preferences’ disorders. The author has conducted a criminological and psychological-psychiatric study of persons guilty of violent sexual crimes that showed that 25 % of participants were diagnosed with sexual preferences’ disorders; besides, 60 % of them had sexual preferences disorders of sadomasochism, mainly in its active form. The author believes that sadomasochism as a psychiatric disorder and sadomasochism as a form of sexual violence have a number of similar manifestations that include violence, cruelty as absolute indifference to the sufferings and the fate of the victim; nevertheless, these destructive phenomena considerably differ in motivation. The current study outlines the diagnostic criteria of sadomasochism which contribute to the correct assessment of a violent sexual offence; it determines the causes and origins of this paraphilia, its impact on the emergence of violent sexual motivation; the study draws clear distinctions between sadomasochism as a psychic disorder accompanied by the weakening of control mechanisms and the disruption in volitional control, and BDSM relationships that are part of modern destructive sexual culture. Research results make it possible to considerably simplify the assessment of the psychic condition of persons who have committed violent sexual crimes; they also help to an important cause of violent sexual crimes, which could become the basis for creating an optimal system for preventing criminal sexual violence.