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The Search for Rapists' “Real” Motives Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 101 | Issue 1 Article 5 Winter 2011 The eS arch for Rapists’ “Real” Motives David P. Bryden Maren M. Grier Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation David P. Bryden and Maren M. Grier, The Search for Rapists’ “Real” Motives, 101 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 171 (2013). https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol101/iss1/5 This Criminology is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. 0091-4169/11/10101-0171 THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 101, No. 1 Copyright © 2011 by David P. Bryden Printed in U.S.A. CRIMINOLOGY THE SEARCH FOR RAPISTS’ “REAL” MOTIVES DAVID P. BRYDEN* & MAREN M. GRIER** I. INTRODUCTION Rape is a controversial subject, and never more so than when the topic is the perpetrators’ motives.1 Scholarly theorizing about rapists’ motives * Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Minnesota. ** Associate, Briggs & Morgan, Minneapolis, Minnesota. We are indebted to Mary McLean, Dee Gibbons, and Laurie Newbauer for secretarial assistance. Emily Pollock, Morgan Holcomb, Therese Kurkowski, Sara Maple-Lenz, and Darcy Sherman did much of the research, supported by Deans Tom Sullivan, Fred Morrison, Guy Charles, and David Wippman. Suzanne Thorpe and Piper Walter of the Law Library provided indispensable assistance. Leslie Goldstein, Morgan Holcomb, Mary Koss, Neil Malamuth, Robert King, Roger Park, and Michael Zuckert read earlier drafts of all or part of the Article, providing valuable suggestions. We were enlightened by conversations with Richard Frase, Michael Tonry, and the late Paul Meehl, and by the comments of two anonymous peer reviewers for this Journal. Of course, none of these scholars necessarily endorses all of our conclusions, and we alone are responsible for any remaining errors. The authors also wish to acknowledge their great debt to Rebecca Bryden. Comments should be addressed to [email protected]. 1 Many modern scholars study “sexual aggression” or “coercion” instead of rape, often defining these terms very broadly to include not only rape and other nonconsensual physical contacts but also lawful verbal pressure to engage in sexual activity. We realize that the legal definition of rape is an imperfect measure of coercion and varies somewhat from one state to another. But the concepts of aggression and coercion are even more flexible, and we prefer not to conflate acts whose gravity, legality, and moral acceptability differ radically, under a potentially misleading umbrella label such as “sexual aggression.” See generally notes 320, 328, infra. Accordingly, we focus here solely on rape, but when discussing a study in which a much broader range of conduct was included we will use the author’s label so as to alert our readers. As we use the term, “rape” means non-consensual, heterosexual penetration. We have excluded statutory rape, homosexual rape (outside prisons), and non-forcible sexual extortion and deception because they raise too many additional issues and, in the case of 171 172 DAVID P. BRYDEN & MAREN M. GRIER [Vol. 101 began in earnest in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychologists propounded several ideas. In the 1970s, feminists articulated their motivational theories, which were later challenged by those of evolutionary psychologists. Ever since the ’70s, the central issue has been whether most rapists are primarily motivated by sexual desire or by ulterior aims such as subjugation of women. Although many scholars do not discuss this question, focusing instead on pornography and other possible non-motivational causes of rape, others regard motivations as exceedingly important.2 This continuing interest in rapists’ motives has few parallels in mainstream criminology. With rare exceptions,3 modern criminologists usually examine non-motivational causes of crime such as the criminal’s childhood, his personality, his peers, his alcoholism, and—at the societal level—demographic and economic trends as well as policing and sentencing policies. For many years, most criminologists have treated criminals’ motives (in the sense of goals) as irrelevant to public policies.4 deception, are rarely illegal. See generally WAYNE R. LAFAVE, CRIMINAL LAW 846–78 (4th student ed. 2003). 2 E.g., RANDY THORNHILL & CRAIG T. PALMER, A NATURAL HISTORY OF RAPE: BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SEXUAL COERCION (2000); Antonia Abbey et al., Cross-Sectional Predictors of Sexual Assault Perpetration in a Community Sample of Single African American and Caucasian Men, 32 AGGRESSIVE BEHAV. 54 (2006); Katherine K. Baker, Once a Rapist? Motivational Evidence and Relevancy in Rape Law, 110 HARV. L. REV. 563 (1997); Megan R. Yost & Eileen L. Zurbriggen, Gender Differences in the Enactment of Sociosexuality: An Examination of Implicit Social Motives, Sexual Fantasies, Coercive Sexual Attitudes, and Aggressive Sexual Behavior, 43 J. OF SEX RES. 163 (2006); Eileen L. Zurbriggen, Social Motives and Cognitive Power-Sex Associations: Predictors of Aggressive Behavior, 78 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 559 (2000). Because non-motivational causes of rape often are thought to have probative value in discerning rapists’ motives, and the concept of motive has various meanings, many works that do not explicitly stress motivational analyses nevertheless provide much evidence that is relevant to our topic. E.g., MARTIN L. LALUMIÈRE ET AL., THE CAUSES OF RAPE: UNDERSTANDING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN MALE PROPENSITY FOR SEXUAL AGGRESSION (2005). 3 E.g., JACK KATZ, SEDUCTIONS OF CRIME: MORAL AND SENSUAL ATTRACTIONS IN DOING EVIL (1988). However, the subject of animal and human motives (for many sorts of behavior) is still studied extensively by evolutionary (and some other) psychologists. See generally MOTIVATION IN ACTION (Jutta Heckhausen & Heinz Heckhausen eds., 2008). 4 See, e.g., JAMES Q. WILSON & RICHARD J. HERRNSTEIN, CRIME AND HUMAN NATURE: THE DEFINITIVE STUDY OF THE CAUSES OF CRIME 39 (1985): It is by no means clear that the most interesting or useful way to look at crime is by trying to discover the motives of individual criminals—why some offenders like to steal cash, others like stolen cash plus a chance to beat upon its owner, and still others like violent sex—any more than it is obvious that the best way to understand the economy is by discovering why some persons keep their money in the bank, others use it to buy tickets to boxing matches, and still others use it to buy the favors of a prostitute. The motives of criminal (and of human) behavior are as varied as the behavior itself; we come to an understanding of the general processes shaping crime only 2011] THE SEARCH FOR RAPISTS’ “REAL” MOTIVES 173 Equally noteworthy is rape scholars’ failure to offer any skeptical critique of the motivation-discerning enterprise. While vigorously criticizing the motivational theories of their disciplinary and ideological rivals, they express no doubts about the feasibility and value of motivational inquiries as such. This Article has three purposes: (1) to describe briefly the historical contexts of the most influential theories about rapists’ motives, with particular attention to the origins of feminist ideas in the 1970s; (2) to appraise the evidence concerning whether those motives are sexual or nonsexual; and (3) to evaluate the claim, explicit or implicit in generations of motivational speculation, that an understanding of rapists’ motives has major descriptive and practical value. Although it would be impossible within a single article to analyze the colossal body of literature about rape’s possible causes, the line between motives and other causes is often indistinct; inevitably, our treatment of some topics will seem too cursory to one reader and too prolix to another. We wish to emphasize that our historical discussions are not digressions; they are important for all of our purposes. Scholars who criticize what they regard as erroneous theories about rapists’ motives commonly attribute the alleged errors either to popular prejudices or to the faults of a rival school of thought—Freudians, feminists, or evolutionary psychologists. Many of these criticisms are telling, but they obscure pervasive faults of motivational analyses that transcend ideological, disciplinary, generational, and even to some extent methodological boundaries. To develop this thesis, we examine early as well as recent scholarly theories. Discussions of authors whose theories were published in the 1970s have the additional justification that many subsequent scholars have been strongly influenced by the motivational ideas espoused by the leading feminist rape scholars of that formative decade. II. RAPISTS AS MENTAL PATIENTS Prior to the 1970s, the leading authorities on rapists’ motives were psychologists. After World War II, some of them wrote books about “sex when we abstract from particular motives and circumstances to examine the factors that lead people to run greater or lesser risks in choosing a course of action. These authors note that “[a]rguing about typologies is a major preoccupation of many students of crime,” and they equate this with a search for “motives,” but by this they mean criminals’ personality types such as sociopathic rather than their motives
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