As part of the review a special work group has been set up to look at sexual disorders. This is relevant because the DSM is used in law enforcement both in USA and the UK as a guide to mental disorders that can prove reduced capacity, or merit hospitalisation on conviction rather than imprisonment.

Coercive Paraphilic Disorder is a mental ‘disorder’ being considered for DSM-V, used to describe a disorder some think is connected with propensity to rape.

Karen Franklin, Ph.D., of the forensic science blog In the News explains:

“Currently, the propensity to rape is not considered a mental illness. Proponents of adding a rapist diagnosis to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) claim it was only excluded the last time around due to pesky feminists’ objections that it would excuse rapists from criminal consequences. However, that turns out to be something of a myth. The main reason it was excluded, says psychologist and lawyer Thomas Zander, who conducted primary research into the history, was because it was not scientifically supportable. And, according to [Raymond] Knight’s* article, it is even less supportable now than it was back then.”

Feminists have long claimed that men who rape are not ‘different’ or mentally ill but normal men (friends, partners, fathers, colleagues) who do bad things – and evidence supports this. In her blog post Franklin refers to Knight’s review of evidence from a long line of research that suggests “there is not a separate category of men with a propensity to rape. Rather than being a distinct “taxon,” rape propensity exists along a continuum.”

I’m with Karen in hoping that good science defeats these pseudoscientific categories, which she describes as “weak at best”; and this ‘rape mental illness’ is kept out of DSM-V in this review, as it was last time around.

*Knight is considered to be a premiere researcher into the etiology of rape. His article ‘Is a diagnostic category for Paraphilic Coercive Disorder defensible?’ Archives of Sexual Behavior is available online, but requires a subscription. You can view the abstract here.

Hat tip to Karen Franklin Ph.D. and her blog, In the News