Empiricising and Substantiating Alfred Adler’s Theory of Child Molestation

Abstract

Alfred Adler diagnosed and treated offenders who committed sex crimes against persons and objects. Although he formulated clinical judgments about the causes of sexual deviance and paraphilia (e.g., lack of social interest), he did not elaborate on the variations that exist within the class of adult child molesters and their behavioral characteristics. In this article, we build on the initial observations that Adler made about the personality characteristics of sex offenders by analyzing the offense behaviors of male-on-male child molesters using the archival accounts of the “perversion files” released by The Boy Scouts of America between 1960s and 1990s. We link the offenders’ offense characteristics—how adult child molesters go about committing their sex crimes against boy victims—to their personality characteristics, thereby providing an empirical bite to the claims that Adler made from his examination of numerous patients. We demonstrate how the conclusions that Adler inferred about adult child molesters—that they possess a distorted private logic, enact a false sense of courage and heroism, and act cowardly—are embodied in their offense characteristics.