Citation

Nitschke J, Istrefi S, Osterheider M, Mokros A. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2012; 35(3): 165-167.

Affiliation

Ansbach District Hospital, Ansbach, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2012.02.003

PMID

22417758

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that severe sexual sadism and psychopathy are phenotypically different, although both are characterized by deficits in emotional processing. We assessed empathic capacity in a sample of 12 sexual sadists in comparison with 23 non-sadistic offenders using the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET). All participants were forensic patients under mandatory treatment orders who had committed sexual offenses. The MET is a computerized rating task that differentiates and measures cognitive and emotional components of empathy, or perspective-taking versus compassionate components. To identify the effects of possible empathy deficits caused by psychopathic traits, we controlled both samples for psychopathy as a covariate, measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). According to our results, sexual sadists did not differ from non-sadistic sexual offenders with regard to emotional empathy for either positive or negative stimuli. The results suggest that severe sexual sadism is a distinct, pathological sexual arousal response, not a deficit in emotional processing.

Language: en