the Habitual Sex Offender which the author which served in 1949 and 1950.

6. That "sex psychopathy" or sex deviation is a clinical entity.-Two-thirds of the psychiatric authorities consulted by the writer pointed to the wide disagreement among psychiatrists as to the meaning of the term, "sex psychopath." More than half of them maintained that this condition is not a sufficiently clear diagnostic entity to justify legislation concerning the type. Hospital authorities handling cases of sex psychopaths committed by the courts find, in fact, a wide variety of psychological types: neurotics, psychoties, schizoids, feeble-minded, epileptics, constitutional homosexuals, alcoholics, and many who are normal. In different states the authorities look for different qualities as evidence of dangerous sexual psychopathy; the cases they adjudicate as such display varied forms of sex deviation and assorted types of personality organization.

The sex statutes recently enacted in 17 juris'dictions have been directed for the most part at "sex psychopaths" or "psychopathic personalities." New York and New Jersey are exceptions in more specifically delimiting the group covered. The statutory definitions by which the several jurisdictions have attempted to define the coverage of their psychopath laws have in fact made even more vague what was already quite unclear concerning the sorts of cases that were designed to be included. The general reluctance observed in applying the statutes may well result in part from uncertainty as to the sorts of cases that should be covered. The descriptive clauses in the enactments leave much to be desired either from the point of view of medical diagnosis or court application.

Insanity and feeble-mindedness are generally excluded by the terms of the laws, but there remains a virtually unlimited area of psychological variability that can be interpreted to come within their intended scope. The concepts employed to define the psychopath, such as mental disorder, mental illness, mental disease, emotional instabil-

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ity, impulsiveness in behavior, and other similar qualities are far from specific in their meaning. This is particularly true if psychological deviation is viewed as a relative matter, with wide gradation from normal to abnormal, and with a majority of men somewhere in between. The more functional terms applied in some of the laws, suggesting a "propensity" to sex crimes, or lack of customary standards of good judgment, have very little utility for distinguishing the psychopath or the abnormal sex offender from other sexual deviates. Such expressions could easily be applied to sex offenders who are nonpathological in their psychological orientation.

7. That these individuals are lustful and oversexed. From the point of view of their treatment and their dangerousness, it is important to realize that most of the sex deviates treated under the laws are undersexed rather than hypergonadal types. A majority are passive or nonaggressive. The problem is very rarely, one of drives too strong to control, as commonly recommended programs of castration, sterilization, and close correctional custody would imply. A recent study of sex offenders at the Menlo Park Diagnostic Center in New Jersey found 54 percent of them to be distinctly sexually inhibited, 68 percent to display inadequate personalities, and 91 percent some measure of emotional' immaturity.

Sexual deficiency is characteristic of exhibitionists and voyeurs and quite commonly of pedophiliacs, passive homosexuals, fetishists, and compulsive murderers. To put it somewhat differently, the drive to sex crime is most often psychic rather than physiological and in such cases must be treated, if at all, on the psychological level. With the exception of rape, which is a youthful and vigorous offense, the average age of sex offenders is significantly higher than that for other crimes (46.7 years compared with 29.3 years in California). These men are past their prime. As Guttmacher has put it, "Sex offenses do not appear to