Defense Styles of Pedophilic Offenders Essay

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, 2007) Finally, "projective identification involves projecting an affect, impulse, or thought onto someone else as if it were really that other person who originated the affect or impulse" (Drapeau et al., 2007).

Looking at the different defenses used by pedophiles, when compared to those used by the control group, it is easy to see how those defenses would be characterized as immature. The id, the ego, and the superego are considered the three levels of development for the individual psyche. The id is considered the most basic level of the psyche. It is where the libido resides, and it encompasses both constructive and destructive impulses. The ego is often cast as the mediator between the id and reality. It is an organized personality structure, and the ego is where many defense mechanisms are thought to reside. The ego is the id, as modified with direct contact with the outer world and by the demands of the superego. Denial, displacement, fantasy, intellectualization, projection, and rationalization are all defense mechanisms linked with the ego. The super ego is almost the opposite for the id. Whereas the id seeks instant self-gratification, the super-ego tries to act in a socially appropriate manner.

Because the ego is cast as the mediator between impulse and social control, the defense mechanisms that a person uses helps indicate what levels of social-control that person finds appropriate. It is not that pedophiles lack a super-ego or fail to understand what behavior is considered appropriate or inappropriate by external society; if they had failed to make that step, these offenses would occur in public, without regard to audience, which is rarely the case. Instead, the defenses used by these pedophiles suggest that, first, their ids exercise far more control over their egos than their super egos do, and, second, that their super-egos have not fully embraced social rules and norms.

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For example, many of the abusers used projection to suggest that their victims had initiated the sexual contact in their relationship. Therefore, projection is the defense mechanism that their ego used to mediate the id's impulse and the super ego's dictate that the action was inappropriate. However, the use of projection demonstrates the immaturity of the pedophile. The super ego should dictate that sexual abuse of a child is absolutely inappropriate at all times, making the projection defense mechanism useless in this scenario. However, the fact that many pedophiles use projection as an excuse demonstrates a super ego that has not fully assimilated the societal belief that child sexual abuse is always inappropriate.

Of course, some of the defenses used by sexual abusers reveal that somewhere in them, they recognize exactly how inappropriate their behaviors have been. A defense is the ego's attempt to transform something that is painful or otherwise unacceptable into something that is acceptable. Therefore, if the super-ego does fully realize that child sexual abuse is absolutely inappropriate under all circumstances, and then the ego's use of the defense mechanism of denial begins to make sense; no other defense would make the action acceptable. How does one convert something that is absolutely unacceptable to something that is even moderately acceptable? It may be impossible for the ego to mediate between those two forces. Therefore, you have a person who, at the conscious level, denies ever engaging in the abuse. The denial means that the id and the super ego are not in conflict; the conflict only occurs if the ego recognizes what has actually occurred. Dissociation is a similar defense, because, by taking consciousness out of the scenario, it permits the ego to suggest that it was only the id that was responsible for the behavior......

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