Disorganized attachment as a diathesis for sexual deviance: Developmental experience and the motivation for sexual offending

Recently, researchers and theorists have begun to focus attention on the early attachments and developmental contexts of sexual offenders. Attachment theory provides a unique conceptual perspective from which to derive possible motivation for some sexual offense behavior, as well as explore the inter- and intrapersonal contexts that contribute to deviant sexual behavior. The quality of attachments in childhood and adolescence is well known to impact development of critical self-regulatory functions such as emotional definition and control, cognitive self-definition, and interpersonal expectation. In this paper, in an effort to contribute to an extant etiological model of sexual offending [Trauma, Violence, Abus 1 (2000) 250], attachment disorganization is identified as a marker for severe attachment insecurity, a specific diathesis in the etiology of sexual offending. We hypothesize that individuals with disorganized attachment experiences do not adequately develop and/or fail to adequately internalize self-regulatory skills, and thus may be more likely to rely on externally based means of self-regulation. In particular, sexual offending is identified as one of several possible strategies of externally based intra- and interpersonal control, emerging primarily in adolescence in response to several pressures: a frightening experience of the self, poor interpersonal relationships, childhood experience with adult sexuality, and the biological and social push of puberty.