Sexual Manifestations of Emotionally Disturbed Behavior

It is difficult to define sexual disturbance today because concepts about emotional disturbance in general and sexual disorder in particular have recently undergone signifi cant changes. Sexual disorders may be seen in terms of (a) specific aberrant acts or (b) the psychological and philo sophic causes that underlie such acts. It would appear to be more meaningful to define them largely in relation to the self- defeating ways in which and reasons for which an individual behaves sexually rather than in terms of the concrete behav iors he performs. When so viewed, the basic causes of sexual disorders seem to be quite the same as those of most general emotional difficulties. Societal reaction to disturbed indi viduals with sexual problems has improved in recent years but is still much too condemnatory and punitive. At the same time, some social thinkers, in a misguided effort to pre vent the persecution of sexually troubled and deviant indi viduals unrealistically refuse to face the facts of their intrinsic neurosis or psychosis and trace all their upsets to social persecution. Sexually disturbed persons are not easy to treat successfully for a variety of reasons, especially by conven tional psychoanalytic methods. But if a hard-headed thera pist actively-directively intervenes in their lives and induces them to challenge and work against their irrational value systems, he may achieve effective results in a relatively brief period of time.