The Internal World of the Juvenile Sex Offender: Through a Glass Darkly then Face to Face

The book aims at providing an empirically based, psychoanalytic understanding about juvenile sex offenders. It details the extent and nature of juvenile offending and its impact on victims. It also provides an extensive psychoanalytically-oriented description of the characteristics of juvenile sex offenders. In doing so, it compares the characteristics and characterizes the differences between juvenile sex offenders and non-offenders. The background of such offenders is examined, focusing on their experiences of abuse, especially sexual abuse, in considering a developmental view of juvenile sex offending. Attention is paid to the unique characteristics of these offenders, especially their attachment difficulties and the level of psychopathy some juvenile sex offenders reveal. The implications of these characteristics of the offender group are then considered in relation to their assessment and treatment.

These considerations are also used to highlight the importance of understanding the internal world of these offenders. Their internal world is viewed through an empirical lens, which reveals them to have impaired psychic representations of human relationship and, in the most psychopathic group, an obfuscation of the need for relationship. The differing problems concerning capacity for relationship and attachment and the means of assessing such problems are suggested to be essential to appropriate interventions. The book provides case examples to illustrate these issues and ultimately proposes an approach to assessment, recommendations for disposition and treatment of this offender group. In particular, it proposes the utility of Mentalization Based Therapy (MBT) with modifications to the most psychopathic and thus, hard to treat offenders.