A close examination of the literature on sexual offending suggests that offenders' problems can be divided into two broad-based constructs: anger-hostility and social-sexual incompetence. In this study involving 64 sex offenders and 33 property offenders, the authors used these constructs in investigating the general, common, and specific features of psychopathology associated with pedophilia, exhibitionism, rape, and multiple paraphilia. A specific approach in design and analysis was also adopted to overcome the methodological problems related to overlapping paraphilic diagnoses. The results indicated that these two constructs were able to distinguish between sex offenders and nonsex offenders and largely between different types of sex offenders. The implications of these results and the specific design and analysis approach are discussed, and ideas for future research are outlined.
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