IDEAS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Exhibitionism
BRETT KAHR
IDEAS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Exhibitionism Brett Kahr
Series editor: Ivan Ward
ICON BOOKS UK TOTEM BOOKS USA
Published in the UK in 2001 by Icon Books Ltd., Grange Road, Duxford, Cambridge CB2 4QF E-mail:
[email protected] www.iconbooks.co.uk Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Faber and Faber Ltd., 3 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AU or their agents Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Macmillan Distribution Ltd., Houndmills, Basingstoke RG21 6XS Published in Australia in 2001 by Allen & Unwin Pty. Ltd., PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065
Published in the USA in 2001 by Totem Books Inquiries to: Icon Books Ltd., Grange Road, Duxford Cambridge CB2 4QF, UK Distributed to the trade in the USA by National Book Network Inc., 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 Distributed in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2 ISBN 1 84046 275 2
Text copyright © 2001 Brett Kahr The author has asserted his moral rights. Series editor: Ivan Ward No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting by Hands Fotoset Printed and bound in the UK by Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading
Introduction: Punting on a Summer’s Day Almost twenty years ago, during my apprenticeship as a young university student, I went ‘punting’ one warm June afternoon with a group of friends on the Isis river in Oxford. Owing to the exceptionally lovely weather, literally dozens of punting parties glided by, and the river soon became very crowded with undergraduates celebrating the completion of final exams. As our boat swerved round a certain winding corner of the river, known locally as ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, a flabby, white-haired, middle-aged man jumped out of some shrubbery on the nearby bank, and he began to undress, exposing his genitals to our party of two young women and two young men. The flasher masturbated frantically as our boat sailed by. My fellow students just giggled with bewilderment. Within a matter of seconds, our punt had turned yet another corner and our flasher, mercifully, disappeared from view. My companions, a mathematician and two students of English literature, appealed to me – the budding psychologist – and asked me whatever might possess somebody to engage in such odd behaviour, in broad daylight, with literally dozens of teenagers sailing by. Sadly, my psychology tuition had ill prepared me to pontificate about the 3
EXHIBITIONISM
origins of genital exhibitionism, and I suppose that I must have muttered something vague about flashers having an ‘unhappy childhood’. I had little sense at the time that indecent exposure represents the most common form of sexual offence and that, in just a few short years, I would be working psychotherapeutically with exhibitionistic patients in the consulting room, who had been referred by probation services and the courts, to help these individuals understand something about the complicated roots of their