what was ever wrong with them. They then experience safe and sane se relations.

Donald Webster Cory suggests' in THE HOMOSEXUAL IN AMERICA that the usual violent ending of most homosexual novels results from the writers' own personal frustrations,

rather than from a depiction of acual circumstances. This writer's first novel, STRANGE SISTERS, was marked by a certain morbidly macabre power. The second, judging from the gray pall that envelops it, must have been written during a manic-depressive phase.

SOME MYTHS ABOUT THE SEX OFFENDER

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(Continued from page 13) type of behavior in which they have discovered satisfaction. Any thoroughly frustrated, rigidly repressed personality may conceivably explode into violence, it is true. There is no evidence, however, that this occurs more frequently among sex offenders than others; indeed there is good psychological ground to believe that individuals who experience some outlet of sexual tensions are less likely to need release of rage and aggression. Progression from minor to major sex crimes is exceptional, though an individual may engage at any given time in a variety of forms of sex outlets. We note from Kinsey's study the diversity of sexual outlet, but this does not suggest that the individual progresses, compulsively or otherwise, from minor to major sex crimes. On the contrary, as Dr. Manfred S. Guttmacher,> chief medical officer of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, Maryland, has noted from his broad experience in these

cases:"

The popular conception which, it seems to me, must be a basic postulate of these laws (sex psychopath statutes), that serious criminal sexual behavior evolves progressively from less serious sexual offenses, is false. Evidence points to the contrary. The individual who has found a method of releasing his neurotic tension, as for example in exhibitionism, has adopted this way of acting out his intrapsychic conflicts because it best meets his unconscious needs. He is conditioned to it and he is very unlikely to seek other methods to accomplish this end.

* Manfred S. Guttmacher, Sexual Offences. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1951, p. 131.

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And Dr. Karl M. Bowman, superintendent of the Langley Porter Clinic in California says the Porter following:3

It should be stated explicitly that persons. convicted of serious sex crimes do not commonly begin with voyeurism and exhibitionism and work up to crimes of violence and murder. Sex offenders have the same tendency as do other criminals to stick to similar types of offense. It is well known that burglars seldom become forgers, and vice versa. Such criminals stick to a particular type of criminal behavior; the same is largely true of sex offenders.

5. That it is possible to predict the danger of serious crimes being committed by sex deviates.— Reports from 75 prominent psychiatrists reveal a consensus that it is impossible to predict the occurrence of serious crime with any accuracy. This. inability to predict is of special importance in relation to recent laws that are designed to constrain individuals who have committed no law violations as well as minor sex deviates and even juveniles.

To be sure, prognostic tests of various sorts have been employed to a limited extent in clinical research on sexual deviates and offenders; mainly Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Tests, the Electroencephalograph, and the amytol and pentothal drugs for brief narcosynthesis. The results of such work thus far is interesting but quite inconclusive: there appears to be some possibility of showing a correlation between certain sexual deviations and typical responses on Rorschach and there is limited indication of peculiar patterns of psychopaths, sexual and other types, on electroencephalographs, but these have not been shown to have predictive value for criminal behavior.、

A California legislative committee on sex crimes concluded, after several months of study, that "it is practically impossible to predict, on the basis of any known criteria, what individuals will be implicated in serious sex crimes." This accords with the finding of the New Jersey Commission on

Karl M. Bowman, Menas S. Gregory Lecture, New York University, Bellevue Medical Center, College of Medicine, January 24, 1951.

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